Meconium is a term used to describe the greenish substance that is the first stool of newborn babies. The word originates from Ancient Greek mekonion, which means “opium”. This connection was made because doctors saw a similarity in appearance to raw opium. The Greek word mekonion comes from mekon, which meant “poppy” and has Indo-European roots, as seen in related words like Serbian mak and German mohn. Interestingly, through French and the addition of the suffix -ine (commonly used in naming chemical compounds), mekonion also gave rise to the term for the morphine-based drug codeine in the 19th century. Since their introduction, the usage of meconium has closely followed the trend of codeine, reaching its peak in the early 1980s.
