pill

Pills, medicines made in globules, of a convenient size for swallowing whole, the medicine being usually mixed up with some neutral substance such as breadcrumbs, hard soap, extract of liquorice, mucilage, syrup, treacle, and conserve of roses. The coverings are liquorice powder, wheat flour, fine sugar, and lycopodium. In many cases pills are now enameled or silvered, which deprives them of most of their unpleasantness. Pills are a highly suitable form for administering medicines which operate in small doses, or which are intended to act slowly or not to act at all until they reach the lower intestines.

Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.

Pill (?), n. [Cf. Peel skin, or Pillion.]

The peel or skin.

Holland.

© Webster 1913.

Pill, v. i.

To be peeled; to peel off in flakes.

© Webster 1913.

Pill, v. t. [Cf. L. pilare to deprive of hair, and E. pill, n. (above).]

1.

To deprive of hair; to make bald.

2.

To peel; to make by removing the skin.

[Jacob] pilled white streaks . . . in the rods. Gen. xxx. 37.

© Webster 1913.

Pill (?), v. t. & i. [imp. & p. p. Pilled (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Pilling.] [F. piller, L. pilare; cf. It. pigliare to take. Cf. Peel to plunder.]

To rob; to plunder; to pillage; to peel. See Peel, to plunder.

Spenser.

Pillers and robbers were come in to the field to pill and to rob. Sir T. Malroy.

© Webster 1913.

Pill (?), n. [F. pilute, L. pilula a pill, little ball, dim. of L. pila a ball. Cf. Piles.]

1.

A medicine in the form of a little ball, or small round mass, to be swallowed whole.

2.

Figuratively, something offensive or nauseous which must be accepted or endured.

Udall.

Pill beetle Zool., any small beetle of the genus Byrrhus, having a rounded body, with the head concealed beneath the thorax. -- Pill bug Zool., any terrestrial isopod of the genus Armadillo, having the habit of rolling itself into a ball when disturbed. Called also pill wood louse.

© Webster 1913.