Meaning of purple heart | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The drug phenobarbitone when taken recreationally.
2. 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.
   US
3. A drinamyl tablet when taken recreationally, popular in the 1960s.
   historical, slang

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

CEFR level