balm

balm in Gilead

A source of comfort, healing, or restoration. The phrase originates in the Bible. I find that the act of writing has always been a balm in Gilead for me. No matter what burden weighs on my mind, writing helps me cope with it. After my husband died, grief counseling was truly a balm in Gilead. I think you'll find close friendships to be a balm in Gilead in times of hardship.

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balmed

slang Drunk. Do you remember last night at the bar at all? You were really balmed! We're going to the club tonight to get balmed! Help him get home, will ya? He started drinking whiskey, and now he's balmed.

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Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

balmed

mod. alcohol intoxicated. (see also bombed (out), embalmed.) Tom was totally balmed and went to bed.

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McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

balm in Gilead

Cure or solace. The expression comes from the Book of Jeremiah (8:22): “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” The King James version translator took as “balm” the Hebrew word sori, which probably meant the resin of the mastic tree; John Wycliffe translated it as “gumme” and Miles Coverdale as “triacle” (treacle). By the nineteenth century, the term was used figuratively for consolation in a time of trouble, by Edgar Allan Poe (in “The Raven”), Charlotte Brontë, and others.

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The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer