pill [LME] In the past physicians would cover bitter pills thinly with gold to make them easier to swallow. This gave rise to the early 17th-century phrase gild the pill, ‘to make an unpleasant or painful necessity more palatable’. As the practice of sugar-coating superseded gilding pills, the more familiar version sugar the pill took over from the end of the 18th century. Pill itself goes back to Latin pilula ‘little ball’ from pila ‘ball’. The Pill as a name for a contraceptive dates from the 1950s. See also pellet.