How to Use anesthetic in a Sentence

anesthetic

1 of 2 adjective
  • Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that can also be used for pain relief.
    — Chevall Pryce, Houston Chronicle, 22 July 2019
  • Tabbaa said ketamine has been used for many years as an anesthetic agent in hospital settings.
    — John Benson, cleveland, 19 Mar. 2021
  • In general, said Clark, the anesthetic agents themselves are safe for the fetus.
    — Trisha Pasricha, STAT, 17 Aug. 2022
  • The execution team prepared the equipment, and a team member could not find anesthetic in the kit.
    — The Arizona Republic, 16 Nov. 2022
  • Menthol is responsible for the flavor of mint and has a cooling and mild anesthetic effect.
    — Talis Shelbourne, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 15 May 2020
  • Paramedics called to the scene then injected McClain with the anesthetic ketamine.
    — Malaika Jabali, Essence, 1 Sep. 2021
  • The buzz around ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic drug, is booming.
    — Julia Ries, SELF, 15 Sep. 2022
  • Then local anesthetic medication is injected into the eye with a tiny needle or as eye drops.
    — Dagny Zhu, Verywell Health, 26 Jan. 2023
  • The reason for denying beating-heart cadavers anesthetic during the removal of their organs is hard to pin down.
    — Dick Teresi, Discover Magazine, 19 Feb. 2012
  • The team gave him the anesthetic drug ketamine to ease his withdrawal and later prescribed him methadone for the same purpose upon discharge.
    — Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 Dec. 2022
  • Paramedics gave Snape 400 milligrams of the anesthetic ketamine in an attempt to calm her down, police said.
    — Bill Hutchinson, ABC News, 11 Apr. 2021
  • Delta 8 offers an effect that's more sedative and anesthetic than other types of cannabinoids found in edibles.
    — Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 15 Oct. 2022
  • Surviving doctors and nurses tried to save their colleagues with emergency surgery in the kitchen, without anesthetic.
    — Jessica Donati, WSJ, 6 Aug. 2021
  • Patients have to purchase their own medicines, anesthetic and other necessities for surgeries.
    — Saeed Shah, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2021
  • Any anesthetic product used on the toad must contain 20% benzocaine or lidocaine.
    — Amaia Gavica, Miami Herald, 23 June 2026
  • An epidural is an injection via a catheter of either an anesthetic agent or a steroid into a person’s epidural space, the space in the body surrounding the spinal nerves.
    — Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes, 31 Dec. 2022
  • The menthol in the peppermint leaves can have a slight anesthetic effect on your throat, suppressing your cough (which is why peppermint appears in many cough drops).
    — Marisa Cohen, Good Housekeeping, 28 Oct. 2022
  • Game and Fish said the anesthetic drug used has a 14-day minimum withdrawal period.
    — Mike McFeely, Twin Cities, 6 Sep. 2019
  • Ketamine itself is known to have anesthetic properties—memory loss, pain relief, trances—at high rates of injection.
    — Sarah Rense, Esquire, 27 June 2017
  • The bugs then pierce their prey with a dagger-like proboscis, injecting enzymes and possibly anesthetic chemicals.
    — National Geographic, 3 Apr. 2019
  • But after a few minutes in a bell jar suffused with anesthetic fumes, Mimosa becomes unresponsive.
    — Amy Brady, Scientific American, 14 Feb. 2023
  • Jackson died four years later, after his personal doctor gave him too large a dose of the anesthetic propofol, which was administered to help the singer sleep.
    — Marco Della Cava, USA TODAY, 30 Jan. 2023
  • Steed recalled working with a post-anesthetic care unit (PACU) nurse in an intensive-care unit.
    — Scott D. Pierce, The Salt Lake Tribune, 30 Apr. 2021
  • The controversy has fizzled somewhat in the decades since, largely because anesthetic methods have improved.
    — Stephanie H. Murray, The Atlantic, 12 Aug. 2022
  • The album’s ideal love is anesthetic, a script for surviving daily chaos and tragedy that doesn’t require reciprocation.
    — Daniel Felsenthal, Pitchfork, 7 Apr. 2026
  • The rest received either salt water or the drug midazolam, a benzodiazepine like Xanax that is also used as an anesthetic agent.
    — C. Michael White, The Conversation, 8 Nov. 2023
  • Just like humans, plants can succumb to the effects of general anesthetic drugs, researchers report this week in the Annals of Botany.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 12 Dec. 2017
  • Medicines sourced by the NHS account for a fifth of its total emissions, with the largest portion coming from inhalers and anesthetic gases.
    — Todd Gillespie, Bloomberg.com, 5 Oct. 2020
  • The anesthetic shots were, as my Korean American friends who had undergone the surgery warned, immensely painful.
    — Harper's BAZAAR, 5 Dec. 2022
  • Fentanyl was first developed in 1960 as a powerful painkiller and surgery anesthetic without the side effect of nausea.
    — Karen Kucher, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Aug. 2020

anesthetic

2 of 2 noun
  • The doctor gave him the stitches without an anesthetic.
  • What’s a euphemism for the drop-of-wine anesthetic at a bris?
    — Washington Post, 21 Jan. 2021
  • He was given anesthetics to ease his pain.
    — Martha Ross, Mercury News, 25 Nov. 2025
  • The salmon was stunned with an anesthetic and lay motionless.
    — Los Angeles Times, 8 Apr. 2022
  • Propofol is a strong sedative that can also be used as an anesthetic.
    — Patrick Frater, Variety, 21 Mar. 2023
  • The aching usually starts hours later once the anesthetic wears off.
    — Jonathan Wosen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 May 2021
  • Then, a topical anesthetic is applied and left on the skin for an hour to help reduce pain.
    — Audrey Noble, Allure, 23 Oct. 2025
  • So some people were having wounds dressed without anesthetic.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 30 Nov. 2023
  • The chili was initially developed to be use as an anesthetic.
    — Mike Masterson, Arkansas Online, 5 Sep. 2020
  • But it’s also used legally as a local anesthetic for surgeries.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 27 Feb. 2023
  • It was modeled after the drug ketamine, an anesthetic that has been used for many years to treat depression.
    — David E. Carpenter, Forbes, 19 Apr. 2021
  • Agents also found vials of diazepam, a sedative, and ketamine, an anesthetic.
    — NBC News, 10 Mar. 2020
  • But the surgical removal is very simple and done with just a local anesthetic.
    — Mona Gohara, Good Housekeeping, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Uricalm is an over-the-counter brand of phenazopyridine, a local anesthetic that acts on the urinary tract.
    — Dr. Keith Roach, oregonlive, 18 Mar. 2022
  • The team also used this approach to block pain in the sciatic nerve in one leg of a rat using a local anesthetic.
    — Abhimanyu Ghoshal, New Atlas, 19 Aug. 2025
  • In practice, this gives it mild pain-relieving effects, rather than acting as a strong anesthetic.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 21 Jan. 2026
  • The doctors gave the man some antibiotic eye drops and a local anesthetic before pulling the stinger out.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 4 Dec. 2020
  • It was even used as a surgical anesthetic until it was banned in 1977.
    — Sophia Vento, Journal Sentinel, 20 July 2023
  • Cocaine is no longer used as an anesthetic, for example, and the bygone era of lobotomies is thankfully over.
    — Allison Futterman, Discover Magazine, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that can distort a user’s sense of sight and sound.
    — Heidi Pérez-Moreno, Washington Post, 15 Dec. 2023
  • Getting a lip injection starts with a topical anesthetic being applied to the area to numb the lips.
    — Ashlyn Messier, Fox News, 27 Sep. 2023
  • Due to the damage, doctors at a nearby clinic had to amputate the leg above the knee, without anesthetic to numb the pain.
    — David Mateo Ricci, STAT, 31 Dec. 2019
  • Modern medicine — with its new anesthetics and vaccines and innovative equipment — emerged around this time.
    — Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 18 Mar. 2026
  • There were still dozens of patients in the wards, the organization added, but supplies of anesthetics and oxygen had run out.
    — Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 21 Dec. 2023
  • Unlike my top surgery, the white-hot pain of being estranged from my only living parent sliced through me without any anesthetic.
    — Chala June, Condé Nast Traveler, 1 June 2023
  • Low doses of most anesthetics, says Franks, work by affecting our brain cells’ receptors.
    — Rj MacKenzie, Popular Science, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Medical culture is the anesthetic that masks the harm inflicted.
    — Robert Pearl, Forbes, 10 May 2021
  • Ketamine, which has long been used as an anesthetic, has drawn growing academic interest in recent years.
    — Lyssanoel Frater, USA Today, 30 Mar. 2026
  • The surgery required general anesthetic and lasted four hours, according to a statement from the palace.
    — Peter Mikelbank, PEOPLE.com, 13 Aug. 2021
  • Your doctor can prescribe a cream with lidocaine or another anesthetic to relieve the pain until the tiny tear heals.
    — Rozalynn S. Frazier, SELF, 10 Mar. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'anesthetic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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