Vocabulary word: placebo
Pronunciation: pla cee bo, the accent is on the second syllable
Meaning: A pill without any medicine in it. Sometimes people become healthier when they take a pill because they think and expect that it will make them better.
People are often given placebos by medical researchers to see if a new medicine has a better effect on people who take it than people who take a pill with no medicine in it. (In good research, neither the people who give the pills to patients nor the people who take them know if they got the real medicine or the placebo.)
