placebo
pronunciation
How to pronounce placebo in British English:
UK [pləˈsiːbəʊ]
How to pronounce placebo in American English:
US [pləˈsiːboʊ]
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- Noun:
- an innocuous or inert medication; given as a pacifier or to the control group in experiments on the efficacy of a drug
- (Roman Catholic Church) vespers of the office for the dead
Word Origin
- placebo
- placebo: [13] Placebo started life as the first person future singular of the Latin verb placēre ‘please’ (source of English please), and hence meant originally ‘I will please’. It was the first word of the antiphon to the first psalm in the Roman Catholic service for the dead, Placēbo Dominō in rēgiōne vivōrum ‘I will please the Lord in the land of the living’. The word’s medical use emerged at the end of the 18th, and arose from the notion of a medicine ‘pleasing’ the patient rather than having any direct physiological effect.=> please
- placebo (n.)
- early 13c., name given to the rite of Vespers of the Office of the Dead, so called from the opening of the first antiphon, "I will please the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm cxiv:9), from Latin placebo "I shall please," future indicative of placere "to please" (see please). Medical sense is first recorded 1785, "a medicine given more to please than to benefit the patient." Placebo effect attested from 1900.
Example
- 1. Ten received stem cells and four received a placebo .
- 2. A second group were given a tea-flavoured placebo .
- 3. And a third group received a placebo .
- 4. In the placebo group , seventeen percent had these ulcers .
- 5. It was only a placebo , a harmless substance .