pharmacy [LME] Pharmacy was originally the administration of drugs, and comes from Old French farmacie, via medieval Latin from Greek pharmakeia ‘practice of the druggist’, based on pharmakon ‘drug’. Pharmaceutical came into English in the mid 17th century. In modern times new developments have led to word coinages based on this word such as the 1990s pharming, punning on ‘farming’, for genetically engineered plants and animals raised to produce pharmaceuticals and big pharma [L20th] for the pharmaceutical business.