One Step Now Education

November 14, 2025

placebo

If a group puts on a placebo conference, did it even happen?

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This joke makes me smile, and it makes my brain itch a bit. Placebo is such an interesting-looking word. It might be worth an investigation. I'm even wondering if it's related to placid.

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From this dad joke we will review the basics of bases and affixes. We'll explore the concept of borrowing and examine loanwords. Finally we'll examine that idea that etymology governs grapheme choice. Let's see where our curiosity leads us...

Meaning

What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?

In order to understand a joke, you must understand a word's meaning. If you don't know the word placebo then you won't find the joke amusing, no matter your sense of humor. Occasionally a riddle or joke can actually serve as an impetus for word study with your students.

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If you did attend the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies annual conference, you will probably learn that the placebo effect is a phenomenon where a person experiences improvement in their condition, even though the treatment is fake. The Collins dictionary entry explains a placebo as "a substance with no effects that a doctor gives to a patient instead of a drug." Why would they do that?

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By comparing the group that receives the actual treatment with the group that receives the placebo, the experimenter can rule out the effects of an actual treatment and the effects of other factors. Participants who receive the placebo are the "control group." If you don't know which group you are in, researchers call the study "blind." The gold standard in experimental research is a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial.

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Whew! That sure is a lot to understand just for my measly dad joke.

Structure

What are the elements that make up this word's structure?

A word investigation might be prompted by a word, but it's actually prompted by the question behind that word. When working with a student, I might ask, "What's challenging about this word?" or even, "What looks weird?"

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To me, it's the ending armadillo, or Italian, like cappuccino. Could placebo have its origins in one of those languages?

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It is also a potential connection with the word placid. So the questions driving my investigation are:

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1. Is placebo from Spanish or Italian?
2. Is placebo related to placid?

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The first step in determining these answers is to analyze my word into its elements to find its base. Every word is or has a base. A base carries the primary lexical meaning of the word. Words that share a base also share a relationship; therefore finding the base will help me with my second question.

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Besides the base, the other elements found in words are affixes, like prefixes and suffixes. I do not recognize any affixes in placebo, but that doesn't mean that one I have not learned yet isn't present. I need to look in an etymological dictionary to find the history of my word and determine its base.

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The Online Etymological Dictionary is the resource I turn to most often with my students. At the entry for placebo on that site, I learn that this word was the name given to a religious rite. The word comes from the phrase, "I shall please" in Latin. The Latin verb for "please" is placere.

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The medical sense of our word came about in 1785, as "a medicine given to please more than benefit the patient." The connection between placebo and please now makes sense.

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But something gives me pause. The phrase "future indicative" is a verb tense (future) and its mood (indicative). The mood of Latin verbs may be unfamiliar to you, and they really aren't necessary to understand. However, this phrase suggests to me that our word may be a straight-up borrowing of this form.

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Borrowing is always an interesting term to use for a word we adopt from another language. It's not like we are giving it back. Another term for this is loanword. We often do not change the spelling with loanwords. We see this in the loanwords spaghetti and cappuccino.

Relatives

What are the word's relatives and history?

There aren't many relatives for this word. However, we know that placebo is a noun, and nouns can be pluralized. This gives us a chance to talk about pluralizing words that end with an

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Now none of us want to be like Dan Quayle and the Infamous Potato Incident. So do we add an or an

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tomato + es --> tomatoes
cappuccino + s --> cappuccinos

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Seems simple right? But rules like this often consider only a limited data set. What if we are trying to pluralize:

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volcano + es --> volcanoes (Isn't this borrowed from Italian?)
radio + s --> radios (Isn't this English?)

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I have yet to find anything that is completely reliable other than, "Look it up in the dictionary." Regardless, both placebos and placeboes are acceptable.

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Words that are related to placebo etymologically besides please, pleasant, and pleasure include placid, which comes from the Latin placere.

Graphemes

What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?

For those wondering why we spell please with the digraph placere. Etymology often governs grapheme choice. We also need a grapheme that would work across all of the relatives in the pleasant and pleasure require a grapheme that can flex from the /i:/ in pleaseto the /ɛ/ in pleasant and pleasure. An

Next Steps

What concepts from this investigation can we explore next to learn more about the English orthographic system?

Who would have thought that a simple dad joke about a placebo conference could lead us to discover that etymology often governs grapheme choice? This principle helps explain not just why we spell please with

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Stay curious,

Brad

​Join the community!
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P.S. If you are considering that last bullet point consider words from French like ballet, machine, or antique. If you're thinking Greek, think chorus, graph, or gymnasium.