Denarcotize
verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To remove the narcotine from. transitive
"In consequence of the solubility of narcotina, and insolubility of morphia in ether, it is employed to denarcotize opium in preparing it for making denarcotized laudanum."
- 2 To denature; to alter so as to cancel an intoxicating, addictive, or disagreeable effect. broadly
"Let the chemists redistil, purify, deodorize, denarcotize, and degustatize the crude compound, and there will be obtained a safe material, a pure alcohol, to give strength and stability to the sufficiently sweet and acid juice of the wild and immature grape, that consents and delights to grow on every hill and valley of our land."
- 3 To administer a stimulant to (a person or animal under the influence of a narcotic) in order to counteract the effects of a narcotic drug.
"However, to assure prompt awakening we routinely give postoperative doses of a stimulant which will overcome barbituric acid depression of the cortical centers and, in this way, denarcotize the patient."
- 4 To render ineffective. figuratively
"The promoters whoop it up with visions of seeing the world in which a trip to Atlantic City next summer looms up and a winter jaunt to Palm Beach is part of the pipe dream, but the customer who figures on this denarcotized system of price-cutting will soon find that by carefully husbanding the coupons the average family could save enough in a year to ride out to the water tank in a day coach."
- 5 To waken; to make aware. figuratively
"To emancipate a man you must find something that shall denarcotize the will, that shall wake it up from its false sleep and reinvigorate it ."
Show 3 more definitions
- 6 To deprive (an addict) of a narcotic drug until there is no longer a physical addiction.
"The appearance of a withered old hag, dressed in a red cloak, who favoured me with her presenece and evil eyes for some minutes, I took as a friendly waning to denarcotize myself by judicious degrees, and in a few days I parted company with this extraordinary drug and its accompanying visions ."
- 7 To remove the issue of narcotics from (a relationship) broadly
"Correa attributes this to Colombia's weak intellectual property rights (IPR) regime, to the urgent need to "denarcotize" U.S.- Colombian relations, and to the negative effects that non-tariff barriers in the U.S. have had on FDI decisions that hinge on exporting back to the U.S. market."
- 8 To remove reliance on narcotics from (an organization)
"On January 5, 1999, he stated that the "first enemy of peace is narcotrafficking. If the FARC takes the decision to eradicate drug crops, they'll do it. Because they definitely have the invluence to carry it out." He added, however: "First they must denarcotize themselves.""
Example
More examples"In consequence of the solubility of narcotina, and insolubility of morphia in ether, it is employed to denarcotize opium in preparing it for making denarcotized laudanum."
Etymology
From de- + narcotize.
More for "denarcotize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.