treacle [ME] It is now a kind of syrup, but treacle was originally an antidote against poison. When the word entered medieval English from Old French triacle, from Greek thēriakē ‘antidote against venom’, which went back to Greek thērion ‘wild beast’, it was a term for an ointment made with many ingredients that counteracted venom. The idea of an antidote extended into that of a remedy or medicine, and later, by way of the sugar syrup used to make a medicine more palatable, into the current sense at the end of the 17th century. Lewis Carroll played on the healing sense when he wrote about treacle wells in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for he was referring to a real, ancient healing well at Binsey just outside Oxford.