quinine

The skeletal formula of quinine.

The red cinchona (Cinchona pubescens), one of the Cinchona species from which quinine is obtained.

The noun is either:

• derived from Spanish quina (“quinine”) (a clipping of quinaquina (“Cinchona bark”)) + English -ine (suffix forming names of chemical substances, especially (among others) alkaloidal substances);[1]; or
• borrowed from French quinine, from quin(quina) (“Cinchona bark”) + -ine (feminine form of -in (suffix forming nouns)).[2]

Spanish quinaquina and French quinquina are both derived from Quechua kina-kina, a reduplication of kina (“bark; (specifically) Cinchona bark”).[3]

The verb is derived from the noun.[4]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkwɪ.niːn/, /kwɪˈniːn/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkwaɪ.naɪn/, /ˈkwɪ.naɪn/, /kwɪˈnaɪn/, /ˈkwɪ.nin/, /ˈkɪ.nin/
• Rhymes: -iːn, -aɪn (some pronunciations)
• Hyphenation: qui‧nine

quinine (countable and uncountable, plural quinines)

1. (pharmacology) An alkaloid with the chemical formula C₂₀H₂₄N₂O₂ originally derived from cinchona bark (from plants of the genus Cinchona) used to treat malaria and as an ingredient of tonic water, which presents as a bitter colourless powder; also, a drug containing quinine or a chemical compound derived from it. [from early 19th c.]
   • 1821, The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, volume 10:

     The alkali of yellow bark may be distinguished from cinchonine by the name of quinine.

   • 1828, The Medical Guide, Quinine, cinchonine, and sulphate of quinine:

     The quinine, being more potent than cinchonine, is generally preferred.

   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 102:

     In spite of quinine, the men sickened day by day. Many of them, fine, strong, active fellows, who had never known what a day's sickness meant, went down before the malarious mist that gathered in the jungles.

   • 1922, Michael Arlen, “2/9/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, London: W[illiam] Collins Sons & Co., →OCLC:

     He hadn't the faintest idea what to do with a cold in the head, he just took quinine and continued to blow his nose.

   • 1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1944, →OCLC, part IV, page 363:

     “Die? Yes, they’ll all die—all these men. No bandages, no salves, no quinine, no chloroform. Oh, God, for some morphia! Just a little morphia for the worst ones. Just a little chloroform. God damn the Yankees! God damn the Yankees!”

   • 1979, Lucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion, New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 127:

     I propose that the availability of increased stores of quinine under British control had a similar facilitating effect on the British colonial expansion into Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

   • 2014, Olivia Williams, “Gin is the Tonic”, in Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London, London: Headline Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 163:

     So far, the daily dose of quinine had been bitter and very unpalatable. […] To make the medicine go down more easily, colonialists occasionally mixed the powder with sugar, water and gin.

• Jesuit's bark

quinine (third-person singular simple present quinines, present participle quinining, simple past and past participle quinined)

1. (transitive, archaic) To treat (someone) with quinine.

   Synonym: (obsolete) quininize

• quinined (adjective)

• quinine on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• IPA^(key): /ki.nin/

• Audio (Switzerland)

  (file)

quinine f (plural quinines)

1. quinine

• “quinine” in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 8th Edition (1932–35).

• “quinine”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.