Word.ws English Dictionary

ouabain

/ˈwɑːbeɪn/

ouabain noun: a poisonous cardiac glycoside, g-strophanthin, found in the seeds of certain lianas.

Noun

ouabain (countable and uncountable, plural ouabains)

  1. A poisonous cardiac glycoside, g-strophanthin, found in the seeds of certain lianas.
    • In moderate dosage ouabain is used today to treat emergency heart failure; in excessive doses it makes the heart go crazy, pumping wildly until it collapses.1985, Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Simon & Schuster, page 113

Forms of ouabain

pluralouabains

Origin of ouabain

From ouaba(io) + -in, after French ouabain, ultimately from Somali waabaayo, meaning "arrow poison".

Questions about ouabain

What does ouabain mean?
Ouabain means a poisonous cardiac glycoside, g-strophanthin, found in the seeds of certain lianas.
What part of speech is ouabain?
Ouabain is a noun.
How do you pronounce ouabain?
Ouabain is pronounced /ˈwɑːbeɪn/.
What is the plural of ouabain?
The plural of ouabain is ouabains.

Words near ouabain in the dictionary

  1. otzovists
  2. ou
  3. Ou-tchang
  4. ou-tenga
  5. ouabagenin
  6. ouabain
  7. ouabains
  8. ouabaio
  9. Ouachita
  10. Ouachita County
  11. Ouachita Parish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ouabain (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.

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