prescription

1. (medicine, pharmacy, pharmacology) A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a medicine or other treatment, such as (ophthalmology) the specific lenses needed for a pair of glasses.Examples: "The surgeon had written thousands of prescriptions for pain killers without proper examinations before the police raided the clinic."; "An old traditional prescription for provoking erotic inclinations ran as follows, The toe of the foot of a man, anointed with oil, or honey, or the ashes of a weasel."Synonyms: scrip, forescript, Rx, ℞countableuncountable

2. (medicine) The medicine or treatment provided by such an order.Examples: "I need you to pick up gramma's prescriptions on your way home."; ""Oh, yes; she is the only sort of person for a nurse. She always," cried Lady Anne, with a sneer, "comes to you with a receipt for a pudding in one hand to make you ill, and then a prescription in the other to cure you.""countableuncountable

3. (figurative) Any plan of treatment or handling; the treatment or handling thus provided.Examples: "Early to bed and early to rise is a prescription for a long, healthy, and terrible life."; "Change is the universal prescription for a wounded spirit. "It will do you so much good," is the constant remark."; "...looking at him I saw that I had been wrong in my prescription, if not in my diagnosis, and that the whisky was working against us."countablefigurativelyuncountable

4. (law) Synonym of enactment, the act of establishing a law, regulation, etc., particularly in writing; an instance of this.Examples: "A statute that cannot find justification for its prescription in one or more of these principles violates international law."Synonyms: enactmentcountableuncountable

5. (linguistics) The act of establishing or formalizing ideal norms for language use, as opposed to describing the actual norms of such use; an instance of this.countableuncountable

6. (law) An established time period within which a right must be exercised and after which it is null and permanently unenforceable.Synonyms: extinctive prescription, liberative prescriptioncountableuncountable