What a great word. It sounds like a chemical, & the literal meaning is "pain-relieving", but I encountered it twice in the Saturday NYT, both times with a context indicating a quality so bland as to be neither stimulating nor offendive. Sort of like elevator music.

Now that I think of it, I haven't seen it used in my nursing practice, though maybe I've just not seen it.

I am not sure I did this right, but using arnie's Ngram Viewer with the words "pain relieving," "analgesic" and "anodyne," clearly "analgesic" is more common. However, interestingly, "pain relieving" was cited zero times between 2000 and 2008.

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both times with a context indicating a quality so bland as to be neither stimulating nor offendive. Sort of like elevator music.

That is one of the meanings, according to Wiktionary, and, although I have no data, I'd suggest it is the most common nowadays.

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Originally posted by bethree5:
What a great word. It sounds like a chemical

Were it a chemical the opposite would be cathodyne. Wrong etymology, though.