English

Noun

red pill ‎(plural red pills)

1. Used other than as an idiom: see red,‎ pill.
2. Something that enables or compels a person to overcome illusion and perceive harsher reality.
   • 2011, Stephen Arterburn & ‎Linda Mintle, Lose It for Life: The Total Solution, ISBN 084994726X, page 49:

     Do you want to continue to live in the false world of dieting, where emotional pain is numbed, health risks are ignored, and false promises are made? Or do you want to take the red pill, as it were, and see the reality of a world in which food and eating don't dominate or take over your life?

   • 2012, Yanis Varoufakis, ‎Joseph Halevi, & ‎Nicholas Theocarakis, Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, ISBN 1136814736:

     We can offer ourselves the option of taking the red pill and, when the circumstancesare right, we shall not be able to resist the lure of the naked truth; however hard it may be to stare it in the face.

   • 2013, John C Alessio, Social Problems and Inequality, ISBN 1409494586:

     Until the media and economy are democratically structured and regulated, the best people can do is take the red pill -- that is, utilize the alternative media for information and thereby purge their neurological systems of large misleading segments of their past education and the mainstream popular media.

   • 2013, David Mint, What is Money? A Quest to Answer the Question of the Ages:

     As you choke down the red pill, we will begin to expound on that eternally important question that few people have bothered to ask, save once, likely around the tender age of four. When the eternally important question, "What is money?

Citations

For usage examples of this term, see Citations:red pill.