What does cocainize mean?
Cocainize is a transitive verb meaning to treat a person, or more often a specific part of the body, with cocaine — chiefly in order to produce local anesthesia. Formed from the noun cocaine plus the suffix -ize, it belongs to the vocabulary of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medicine, when cocaine was hailed as a groundbreaking local anesthetic following its isolation from the coca plant. Surgeons and dentists of that era spoke of cocainizing an eye, the nasal passages, or the gums before operating. Today the word survives almost exclusively in historical medical texts and scholarly discussions of the history of pharmacology; modern clinicians have long since replaced it with terms built around safer synthetic anesthetics such as procaine and lidocaine. Because of its dated associations, using cocainize outside a historical context can sound jarring or deliberately archaic, though it remains precise when describing the actual practices of early anesthesiology.
verbTo treat or medicate a person, or a part of the body, with cocaine, especially to produce anesthesia.
- To administer cocaine to a person or body part, typically as a local anesthetic.
- (Historical/rare) To habituate a person to cocaine.
"The surgeon cocainized the patient's nasal passages before the procedure."
"The physician cocainized the patient's eye before removing the foreign body."
"Early twentieth-century medical texts described how surgeons cocainized tissue prior to minor operations."
Before modern anesthetics existed, surgeons literally 'cocainized' patients to operate painlessly — the word is a fossil from the era when cocaine was considered a medical miracle.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cocainize
Cocainize was formed in English by combining the noun cocaine with the productive suffix -ize, which builds verbs denoting the application or treatment with something. Cocaine itself derives from coca, the name of the Andean shrub whose leaves contain the alkaloid; coca entered European languages through Spanish from Quechua, the language of the Andes where the plant has long been cultivated and chewed. The verb arose in the late nineteenth century, after cocaine's anesthetic properties were identified in the 1880s and it rapidly became standard in surgery and dentistry.
Related word forms
How cocainize is actually used
Almost entirely confined to historical and medical literature; it reflects the period when cocaine was routinely used in clinical practice before safer local anesthetics were developed. It carries a dated, technical register and would strike most modern readers as unusual.
Easily confused with cocainize
Cocaine is the drug itself (a noun), whereas cocainize is the verb meaning to treat someone or something with that drug.