gateway drug
gateway drug noun: a typically legal or less harmful substance, such as marijuana, whose use is statistically associated with an increased likelihood of progressing to a more dangerous or illicit drug.
Noun
gateway drug (plural gateway drugs)
- A typically legal or less harmful substance, such as marijuana, whose use is statistically associated with an increased likelihood of progressing to a more dangerous or illicit drug.
- Any thing or area of interest that tends to lead to a deeper involvement.
- It has been said that LINQ is a gateway drug for functional programming2014, Dave Fancher, Book of F#: Breaking Free with Managed Functional Programming, page XX
- Darn you, Downton Abbey, for being the gateway drug for all things BBC.2019, Emily Padraic, Under My Skin, page 3
Forms of gateway drug
| plural | gateway drugs |
|---|
Questions about gateway drug
- What does gateway drug mean?
- Gateway drug means a typically legal or less harmful substance, such as marijuana, whose use is statistically associated with an increased likelihood of progressing to a more dangerous or illicit drug.
- What part of speech is gateway drug?
- Gateway drug is a noun.
- What is the plural of gateway drug?
- The plural of gateway drug is gateway drugs.
Words near gateway drug in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gateway drug (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-gateway drug.wav.
Cite this entry: “gateway drug.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gateway_drug. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.