Other forms: caring, cared, cares
To care is to feel that something matters to you. You care about your friends, care what your mother thinks, care whether the team wins.
Watch the prepositions, because they split the meaning in two. Care ABOUT is feeling: he cares about the planet. Care FOR is looking after: she cared for her father for eight years — and in a polite or negative frame it means liking, as in I don't care for coffee. Would you care to sit down? is old-fashioned, and you still hear it from waiters. The noun runs the same range: care as work (child care, health care, in care), care as attention (handle with care, take care crossing the road), and care as worry (not a care in the world). One sentence people get backwards: I couldn't care less means you care nothing at all, so I could care less says the opposite of what the speaker means.
1verbcareTo feel that someone or something matters to you.~2%
“He cares about the work more than he lets on.”
synonyms: mind
2verbnurseTo look after someone who cannot look after themselves.~7%
“She cared for her father at home for eight years.”
synonyms: nurse, tend, look after
3verbquestionsTo like something — used in questions and negatives.~2%
“I don't care for sweet wine.”
4nounneedsThe work of looking after someone who needs help.~85%
“He needs full-time care and the waiting list is two years long.”
5nouncautionClose attention paid so that nothing goes wrong.~2%
“She lifted the box down with care.”
6nounworryA worry or trouble weighing on someone.~2%
“He walked out of the building without a care in the world.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old English caru meant sorrow, grief and anxiety — a weight on a person, not a warm feeling. Behind it stands Proto-Germanic karo, which held care and sorrow and crying together, from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to shout or call out. The oldest care is the noise a person makes in grief; I care about you is the gentle end of a very old cry.
Middle English
care
English, today
care
Built from
From Middle English care. From Middle English care, from Old English caru, ċearu (“care, concern, anxiety, sorrow, grief, trouble”), from Proto-West Germanic karu, from Proto-Germanic karō (“care, sorrow, cry”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵeh₂r- (“shout, call”). Cognate with Old Saxon cara, kara (“concern, action”), Middle High German kar (“sorrow, lamentation”), Icelandic kör (“sickbed”), Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐍂𐌰 (“concern, care”). Related also to Dutch karig (“scanty”), German karg (“sparse, meagre, barren”), Latin garriō, Ancient Greek γῆρυς. See also chary.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA