quinine

Etymology

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);; or * borrowed from French quinine, from quin(quina) (“Cinchona bark”) + -ine (feminine form of -in (suffix forming nouns)). Spanish quinaquina and French quinquina are both derived from Quechua kina-kina, a reduplication of kina (“bark; (specifically) Cinchona bark”). The verb is derived from the noun.

noun

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.
   The alkali of yellow bark may be distinguished from cinchonine by the name of quinine. 1821, The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, volume 10
   The quinine, being more potent than cinchonine, is generally preferred. 1828, The Medical Guide, Quinine, cinchonine, and sulphate of quinine
   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. 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 102
   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. 1922, Michael Arlen, “2/9/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, London: W[illiam] Collins Sons & Co., →OCLC
   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. 1979, Lucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion, New Haven, Conn., London: Yale University Press, published 2002, page 127
   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. 2014, Olivia Williams, “Gin is the Tonic”, in Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London, London: Headline Publishing Group, page 163

verb

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