blue pill

• bluepill, blue-pill

(rejection of the red pill): From a scene in the film The Matrix (1999), where the main character, who lives in a virtual world known as the Matrix, is given a choice between a red pill that will allow him to learn the truth about the Matrix and a blue pill that will return him to his simulated life.

blue pill (plural blue pills)

1. (historical) Synonym of blue mass (“pill of prepared mercury”).
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 3, in Vanity Fair‎^[1]:

     He scarcely knew a single soul in the metropolis: and were it not for his doctor, and the society of his blue-pill, and his liver complaint, he must have died of loneliness.

   • 1909, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 27, in Anne of Avonlea‎^[2]:

     " […] I'm getting old and it doesn't agree with me. I know I'll be fearfully cranky by the time I'm sixty. But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills."

2. (slang) A pill of sildenafil (Viagra), used to treat erectile dysfunction.

   Synonyms: bluey, little blue pill

3. Rejection of the red pill philosophy.

   Antonym: red pill

blue pill (third-person singular simple present blue pills, present participle blue pilling, simple past and past participle blue pilled)

1. (transitive) To reject the red pill philosophy.

   Antonym: red pill