nocebo

nocebo

English

WOTD – 23 October 2017

Cebocap placebo capsules.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin nocēbō (“I will harm”), the first-person singular future active indicative form of noceō (“I harm”), by analogy with placebo. The word was coined by Walter P. Kennedy in a 1961 article entitled “The Nocebo Reaction” (see quotation).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: nōsē′bō, IPA^(key): /nəʊˈsiː.bəʊ/

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• (General American) enPR: nōsē′bō, IPA^(key): /noʊˈsi.boʊ/
• Rhymes: -iːbəʊ
• Hyphenation: no‧ce‧bo

Noun

nocebo (plural nocebos)

1. (pharmacology, also attributive) A substance which a patient experiences as harmful due to a previous negative perception, but which is in fact pharmacologically (medicinally) inactive. [from 1961]
   • 1961 September, Walter P. Kennedy, “The Nocebo Reaction”, in Medical World, volume 95, London: Medical Practitioners' Union, ISSN 0025-7621, OCLC 714999966, PMID 13752532, page 203:

     It is somewhat surprising that little attention has been drawn to the existence of the contrary effect [to the placebo] – which I may call the nocebo reaction.

   • 2009 April 25, Stuart Blackman, “Why health warnings can be bad”, in Financial Times:

     In the case of the nocebo, it is negative expectations that become self-fulfilling prophecies.

   • 2014 May 15, Jennifer Welsh, “Researchers who Provided Key Evidence for Gluten Sensitivity have now Thoroughly Shown that It Doesn’t Exist”, in Business Insider‎, archived from the original on 2 July 2017:

     It seems to be a "nocebo" effect – the self-diagnosed gluten sensitive patients expected to feel worse on the study diets, so they did.

   • 2020, Rutger Bregman, Humankind‎, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:

     If there's one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it's that ideas are never merely ideas. […] Maybe you see where I'm going with this: our grim view of humanity is also a nocebo.

Derived terms

• nocebo effect

Translations

pharmacologically inactive substance experienced as harmful

Albanian: nocebo Czech: nocebo (cs) Danish: nocebo Dutch: nocebo Finnish: nosebo Galician: nocebo German: Nocebo (de) n Indonesian: nocebo Italian: nocebo (it) m Korean: 노시보 (nosibo) Macedonian: ноцебо (nocebo) Norwegian: nocebo Polish: nocebo (pl) Portuguese: nocebo m Russian: ноцебо (ru) (nocebo) Spanish: nocebo (es) Swedish: nocebo Turkish: nocebo Ukrainian: ноцебо (nocebo) Vietnamese: nocebo

See also

• drug
• placebo

Further reading

• nocebo on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /noˈkeː.boː/, [nɔˈkeːboː]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /noˈt͡ʃe.bo/, [noˈt͡ʃɛːbo]

Verb

nocēbō

1. first-person singular future active indicative of noceō

Descendants

• English: nocebo