Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

purple heart

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.28 in modern English

Syllables: pur-ple -heart
IPA

18

Scrabble Score

11

Letters

3

Syllables

8

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The drug phenobarbitone when taken recreationally.

noun

A drinamyl tablet when taken recreationally, popular in the 1960s.

Slang

noun

A US military decoration awarded in the name of the President of the United States to those wounded or killed while serving on or after 5 April 1917.

American usage

Example Sentences

"Detective Peter Goodall said the source of the tablets had not been traced. "Purple heart" or drinamyl tablets, were a stimulant drug and habit-forming."
"And every penny she had / Was spent on purple hearts and cigarettes"
"We were all coming down from taking purple hearts, the fashionable uppers of the period."

Etymology

From the color of the pills.

Usage

Slang
American usage

Inflected Forms

purple hearts (plural)

Synonyms

sodium thiopental phenobarbital phenobarbitone luminal order of the purple heart

Questions

What does purple heart mean?: The drug phenobarbitone when taken recreationally.
Where does purple heart come from?: From the color of the pills.

How to pronounce purple heart

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “purple heart”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
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Repeat and practice — Say “purple heart” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.