Anecdote vs antidote

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Grammarist

An anecdote is a short recounting of a true incident that occurred to the storyteller or another real person. An anecdote is usually funny, it is at the very least, interesting. The adjective form of anecdote is anecdotic, nouns signifying the storyteller are anecdotalist or anecdotist. The word anecdote appears in the late seventeenth century from the French anecdote, meaning secret or private stories, which derives from the Greek anekdota meaning things unpublished.

An antidote is medicine one takes to counteract poison. Each poison has its own specific antidote. Antidote has also come to mean something that remedies an unpleasant or harmful situation. The adjective form is antidotal. The Latin word antidotum was used early on in the English language to denote a remedy counteracting poison.

Examples

In a chat on HuffPost Live, the Mistress America actress shared some cringeworthy stories about starting out in the biz, including one anecdote about auditioning for a certain CW show that’s basically the antithesis of Frances Ha. (USA Today)

“…we are concerned that Greenfield’s claims are not based on a fair scientific appraisal of the evidence, often confuse correlation for causation, give undue weight to anecdote and poor quality studies, and are misleading to parents and the public at large,” Vaughan Bell, a psychology professor at University College London; Dorothy Bishop, a developmental neuropsychologist at Oxford; and Andrew Przybylski, an internet researcher also at Oxford, wrote in an editorial in the British Medical Journal. (Business Insider)

The narrative spins off a single anecdote: Two years ago, Dr. Wachter’s top-tier hospital was humming along with an expensive electronic system full of safeguards against every possible form of error, when a gigantic error occurred. (The New York Times)

It took 18 vials of the antidote to treat John Hunter, the East Providence man admitted to the hospital last week after he was bitten by a poisonous copperhead snake. (The Providence Journal)

His alleged involvement raises awkward questions for junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha, who has again and again justified his coup remaining yr as a much-needed antidote to graft that he says flourished beneath a chain of elected civilian governments. (The Suffield Times)

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