nostrum

noun

nos·​trum ˈnä-strəm 

1

: a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but usually without scientific proof of its effectiveness

… is put to work at county fairs, promoting a quack nostrum for pain relief.

—Patrick McGrath

2

: a usually questionable remedy or scheme : panacea

an audience eager to believe he had found the nostrum for all of society's ills

—Warren Sloat

Did you know?

"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.

Synonyms

• catholicon
• cure-all
• elixir
• panacea
• theriac

Examples of nostrum in a Sentence

politicians repeating all the usual nostrums about the economy

using garlic as a nostrum to prevent disease

Recent Examples on the Web

Population trends today should raise serious questions about all the old nostrums that humans are somehow hard-wired to replace themselves to continue the species. —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

Word History

Etymology

Latin, neuter of noster our, ours, from nos we — more at us

First Known Use

1602, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing nostrum

• mare nostrum

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Medical Definition

nostrum

noun

nos·​trum ˈnäs-trəm 

: a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but usually without scientific proof of its effectiveness