Placebo

//pləˈsiː.bəʊ// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A dummy medicine containing no active ingredients; an inert treatment.

    "The acid test, I thought, was whether homeopathic remedies behave differently from placebos when submitted to clinical trials."

  2. 2
    (Roman Catholic Church) vespers of the office for the dead wordnet
  3. 3
    The vespers sung in the office for the dead.

    "There the placebo, the office for the dead, was sung, and a vigil kept throughout the night."

  4. 4
    an innocuous or inert medication; given as a pacifier or to the control group in experiments on the efficacy of a drug wordnet

Antonyms

All antonyms
nocebo

Example

More examples

"We found no evidence to support a beneficial effect on pain, function, and quality of life of ultrasound over placebo in patients with ultrasound-proven plantar fasciitis 6 weeks following treatment."

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English placebo, borrowed from Latin placēbō (“I will please”), the first-person singular future active indicative of placeō (“I please”).

Related phrases

placebo buttonplacebo effectplacebo-controlledmedical ethics

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.