Valium

English

Marketing coinage. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈvæl.i.əm/
- Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈvæl.i.əm/, /ˈvæl.jəm/
- Audio (US): (file)
Rhymes: -æliəm

Valium (countable and uncountable, plural Valiums)

(trademark, pharmacology) The drug diazepam.
Coordinate terms: Librium, Miltown
- 2003, Samuel H. Barondes, quoting Peter D. Kramer, chapter 4, in Better than Prozac, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 47:
  Mothers little helpers were pills—Miltown, amphetamine, barbiturates, Librium, and Valium were the most popular and widely available in the fifties and early sixties—that were used to keep women in their place, to make them comfortable in a setting that should have been uncomfortable, to encourage them to focus on tasks that did not matter.
(countable) A Valium pill.

“Valium”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
“Valium”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Valium m (plural Valiums)