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Pills
A pill was originally defined as a small, round, solid pharmaceutical oral medication dosage form. The etymology of the word reflects the historical concept of grinding ingredients with a mortar and pestle and rolling the resulting paste or flour into lumps for drying. Today, in its strict sense, the word pill still refers to tablets (including caplets) rather than capsules (which were invented much later), but a general hypernym is intuitively needed to cover all such oral dosage forms, its broader meaning. The term pill is also widely used and includes both tablets and capsules — colloquially, any solid oral medication falls into the “pill” category (see Notes on Pills § Usage).
An early example of pills comes from ancient Rome. They were made of zinc carbonate hydrogensite and smithsonite. The pills were used for sore eyes and were found on the Relitto del Pozzino, a Roman shipwreck in 140 BC. However, these tablets were meant to be applied to the eye, not swallowed.
Caplet
A caplet is a smooth, coated, oval shaped medicinal tablet of the general shape of a capsule. Many caplets have an indentation down the middle so they can be split in half more easily. Since their inception, capsules have been viewed by consumers as the most effective method of taking medicine. For this reason, OTC painkiller manufacturers seeking to emphasize the potency of their products have developed “caplets,” a portmanteau of capsule-shaped tablets, to link this positive association with more efficiently produced tablet pills. Easier-to-swallow shape than typical disc-shaped tablets.
Orally Disintegrating Tablets (ODT)
An orally disintegrating tablet, or orodispersible tablet (ODT), is a drug dosage form available for a limited range of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs.
Film Coated Tablets (FCT)
Film coated tablets are a drug dosage form available for a limited range of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs. The films used protect the drug substance against denaturation by stomach acid and/or support a delayed (altered) release of the drug substance (“retarded effect”). Such tablets should not be damaged or broken.
