What does "benzodiazepine" mean?

Any of a class of psychoactive drugs, structured upon diazepine, used in the treatment of anxiety, insomnia and other related disorders.

What is a synonym for "benzodiazepine"?

Common synonyms include: benzo, benzo, bzd, bzd.

Pronounced //ˌbɛnzoʊdaɪˈæzɪpiːn//.

//ˌbɛnzoʊdaɪˈæzɪpiːn// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
Any of a class of psychoactive drugs, structured upon diazepine, used in the treatment of anxiety, insomnia and other related disorders.
"That week we were in the desert I couldn't sleep—perhaps a couple of hours each night at the most even with a steady intake of benzodiazepine."
2
any of several similar lipophilic amines used as tranquilizers or sedatives or hypnotics or muscle relaxants; chronic use can lead to dependency wordnet

"That week we were in the desert I couldn't sleep—perhaps a couple of hours each night at the most even with a steady intake of benzodiazepine."

From benzo- + diazepine.

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