This is a word I found while “reading” the dictionary one day. It means to banish grief from a person’s mind, but more specifically, it is a drug that brings welcome forgetfulness. On the page, nepenthe seemed much more benign. Anyone who has seen the television show “Heroes” or the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” will know that forgetting is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Joanna
New York
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I’ve read a little about this word before. I think most scholars have concluded that it refers to some sort of early opiate.
The only place I have ever seen the word “nepenthe” used was E.A. Poe’s, “The Raven” — “Respite, respite and nepenthe” — two vocabulary words in one line of poetry! Because of Poe, I learned a lot of words at the age of 9 or so that I would otherwise not have learned until much later.
What a wonderful discovery! I too enjoy wandering thru the dictionary. Thank you!