Barbital

//ˈbɑː.bɪt.əl// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The first commercially marketed barbiturate, used as a hypnotic drug until the mid-1950s. countable, uncountable

    "A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found apparently dead after a night's exposure in some lonely spot. There were no reflexes, no pulse, no respiration or heart-beat. Yet she was alive—existing without oxygen—an impossibility as we had always supposed."

  2. 2
    a barbiturate used as a hypnotic wordnet

Example

More examples

"A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found apparently dead after a night's exposure in some lonely spot. There were no reflexes, no pulse, no respiration or heart-beat. Yet she was alive—existing without oxygen—an impossibility as we had always supposed."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.