What does "polypharmacy" mean?

The use of multiple drugs to treat multiple concurrent disorders in the same (now especially elderly) patient, chiefly with connotations of indiscriminate or excessive prescription (involving overmedication and overprescription).

What is a synonym for "polypharmacy"?

Common synonyms include: polypragmasia.

Polypharmacy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The use of multiple drugs to treat multiple concurrent disorders in the same (now especially elderly) patient, chiefly with connotations of indiscriminate or excessive prescription (involving overmedication and overprescription). uncountable
"Critics denounced physicians as meddlesome, capriciously practising an often dangerous polypharmacy – a blunderbuss approach."

Synonyms

All synonyms

polypragmasia

Example

More examples

"Critics denounced physicians as meddlesome, capriciously practising an often dangerous polypharmacy – a blunderbuss approach."

Etymology

From poly- + pharmacy, after Ancient Greek πολυφάρμακος (poluphármakos).

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