Word.ws English Dictionary

absent treatment

absent treatment noun: a (nonscientific or pseudoscientific) form of (alleged) medical therapy in which the practitioner brings about healing despite their being physically absent, through telepathy, telekinesis, prayer, or a combination of those.

Noun

absent treatment (countable and uncountable, plural absent treatments)

  1. (archaic) A (nonscientific or pseudoscientific) form of (alleged) medical therapy in which the practitioner brings about healing despite their being physically absent, through telepathy, telekinesis, prayer, or a combination of those.
    • In 1859, Quimby [Phineas Parkhurst Quimby] opened an office in Portland, Maine, after several years spent treating the sick at his home in Belfast [Belfast, Maine] and during his travels. He treated his patients with a combination of panaceas, giving them glasses of magnetized water, rubbing their...2019 [1999], Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, Twentieth Anniversary Edition edition, Picador, →ISBN, pages 54-59
    Synonyms:
    teletherapy
  2. (uncommon) Interpersonal treatment (way of interacting), usually mistreatment, that ignores the presence of a person.
    • Near-synonyms: silent treatment, cold shoulder

Synonyms of absent treatment

Forms of absent treatment

pluralabsent treatments

Questions about absent treatment

What does absent treatment mean?
Absent treatment means a (nonscientific or pseudoscientific) form of (alleged) medical therapy in which the practitioner brings about healing despite their being physically absent, through telepathy, telekinesis, prayer, or a combination of those.
What part of speech is absent treatment?
Absent treatment is a noun.
What is the plural of absent treatment?
The plural of absent treatment is absent treatments.

Words near absent treatment in the dictionary

  1. absense
  2. absent
  3. absent over leave
  4. absent referent
  5. absent referents
  6. absent treatment
  7. absent treatments
  8. absent voter
  9. absent voters
  10. absent without leave
  11. absent-minded

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: absent treatment (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “absent treatment.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/absent_treatment. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.