Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A system for treating disease based on the administration of minute doses of a drug that in massive amounts produces symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease itself.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The medical treatment of diseased conditions of the body by the administration of drugs which are capable of exciting in healthy persons symptoms closely similar to those of the morbid condition treated.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) The art of curing, founded on resemblances; the theory and its practice that disease is cured (tuto, cito, et jucunde) by remedies which produce on a healthy person effects similar to the symptoms of the complaint under which the patient suffers, the remedies being usually administered in minute doses. This system was founded by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, and is opposed to allopathy, or heteropathy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun pseudoscience a system of treating diseases with small amounts of substances which, in larger amounts, would produce the observed symptoms.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a method of treating disease with small amounts of remedies that, in large amounts in healthy people, produce symptoms similar to those being treated

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From German Homöopathie; homeo- + -pathy

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Examples

Comments

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  • An easy and enjoyable word to speak, even if it represents an odious concept. Aesthetically pleasing, even.

    March 14, 2008

  • The transition from the round 'o' to the pert 'p' to the toothsome 'th' is what gives it its lustre.

    March 14, 2008