Other forms: placebos
A placebo is a fake pill with nothing in it that sometimes works anyway. A placebo effect, placebo-controlled, given a placebo.
Comparing a treatment against a placebo is how trials separate the drug from everything else that happens when somebody is treated. The placebo effect is real and measurable, particularly for pain, and it works to some degree even when patients are told they are taking one. Note nocebo, the same effect producing harm; and that the Latin means I shall please.
1nounplaceboA dummy treatment used for comparison.
“Half the patients got the new drug and half got a placebo.”
placebo is a dummy treatment.
Latin placebo means I shall please, from placere, to please. It was the first word of a psalm sung at funerals, and the word came to mean a flatterer before it meant a dummy pill.
Latin
placēbō — I will please
Middle English
placebo
English, today
placebo
Built from
Middle English placebo, Latin placēbō (“I will please”), the first-person singular future active indicative of placeō (“to please”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA