Word
placebo
Phoneticsplace·bo
US/pɫəˈsiboʊ/
UK/pləsˈiːbəʊ/
Definitions
01medical treatment
n. a pill or treatment that has no medicine in it, used in medical tests to compare with a real drug.
n. an inert substance or procedure administered to a patient or research subject, serving as a control in clinical trials to isolate the effects of an active drug.
“Half of the people in the study received the new medicine, while the others were given a placebo.”
“To ensure the validity of the clinical trial, the researchers conducted a double-blind study where neither the doctors nor the patients knew who received the placebo.”
Technical
Usage
Often used in the phrase 'placebo effect' to describe when a patient feels better simply because they expect to.
Synonyms
Antonyms
02religious service
n. a specific prayer service or song for the dead in the Catholic Church.
n. the vespers in the Office of the Dead, named after the opening word of the first antiphon.
“The monks gathered in the chapel to sing the Placebo for the departed brother.”
“The historical manuscript contains the full musical notation for the Placebo as it was performed in the fourteenth century.”
Archaic · Formal
Usage
Usually capitalized in liturgical contexts.
Synonyms
Real-World Examples
“A person takes a placebo pill but is warned it may cause side-effects.” “These can work differently in a PMDD population than in other patient groups, she explains, often beating a placebo within 24 hours instead of weeks .” Etymology
Inherited from Middle English placebo, borrowed from Latin placēbō (“I will please”), the first-person singular future active indicative of placeō (“I please”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Domain
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/placebo