Panacea

WORD OF THE DAY

panacea / noun / pan-uh-SEE-uh

Definition
1a: a remedy for all ills or difficulties
1b: cure-all

Examples
But there isn’t one oil-fighting shampoo panacea for everyone.
— Adam Hurly, Robb Report, 28 Apr. 2022

In Hawaiʻi, ‘awa root is used like a panacea for conditions ranging from insomnia to headaches to kidney disorders.
— Kathleen M. Wong, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Mar. 2022

Did You Know?
Panacea is from Latin, and the Latin word, in turn, is from Greek panakeia. In Greek, panakēs means "all-healing," combining pan- ("all") and akos, which means "remedy."
The Latin designation Panacea or Panaces has been awarded to more than one plant at one time or other, among them the herb today known as Prunella vulgaris, whose common name is self-heal.
More often than not, panacea is used when decrying a claim made for a remedy that seems too good to be true.
Most likely that's what the author is doing in a 1625 anatomical treatise, describing "a certaine medicine made of saffron, quick silver, vermilion, antimonie, and certaine sea shels made up in fashion of triangular lozenges," and calling it a panacea.

Additionally, Panacea was the goddess of healing. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, alchemists who sought to concoct the "elixir of life" (which would give eternal life) and the "philosopher's stone" (which would turn ordinary metals into gold) also labored to find the panacea.
But no such medicine was ever found, just as no solution to all of a society's difficulties has ever been found. Thus, panacea is almost always used to criticize the very idea of a total solution ("There's no panacea for the current problems plaguing Wall Street").