Patrick McGrathWarren Sloat
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"Whether there was real efficacy in these nostrums, and whether their author himself had faith in them, is more than can safely be said," wrote 19th-century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, "but, at all events, the public believed in them." The word nostrum has often been linked to quack medicine and false hopes for miracle cures, but there's nothing deceitful about its etymology. It has been a part of English since at least the early 17th century, and it comes from the Latin noster, meaning "our" or "ours." Some think that specially prepared medicinal concoctions came to be called nostrums because their purveyors marketed them as "our own" remedy. In other words, the use of nostrum emphasized that such a potion was unique or exclusive to the pitchman peddling it.
Examples of nostrum in a Sentence
Nicholas Eberstadt, Foreign Affairs, 10 Oct. 2024
Expressed in what economists call the Phillips curve, this nostrum proved nearly useless in explaining the economy’s recent behavior.
—David J. Lynch, Washington Post, 28 Jan. 2024
In September 2021, DeSantis appointed as his state’s surgeon general the COVID crank Joseph Ladapo, an advocate of the useless anti-COVID nostrums hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and a persistent anti-vaccine advocate.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 22 Jan. 2024
This is a departure from the standard time-travel nostrum that any change to the past runs the danger of making things immeasurably worse in the future.
—Jennifer Ouellette and Sean M. Carroll, Ars Technica, 24 Nov. 2023
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Cite this Entry
“Nostrum.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nostrum. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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nostrum
noun
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