Other forms: cured, curing, cures
To cure someone is to make an illness go away for good. A course of tablets that clears the infection, a doctor saying the condition is curable, the whole difference between feeling better and actually being well.
As a noun it is the remedy itself: a cure for hay fever, and still no cure for the common cold. Keep it apart from treat — you treat a patient for weeks, and you cure them only when the disease is gone. It stretches to problems as well: more money will not cure the shortage of staff. Then there is the kitchen sense, which feels unrelated but is the same word: to cure meat or fish is to keep it from spoiling with salt, smoke or time, giving cured ham, cured salmon, bacon cured for three months. Builders use it too — concrete and resin cure, meaning they harden into their final state.
1verbhealTo make a sick person well, or to end a disease completely.~53%
“The antibiotics cured the infection in a week.”
synonyms: heal
2nounremedyA medicine or treatment that ends a disease.~18%
“There is still no cure for the common cold.”
synonyms: remedy
3verbputTo put an end to a problem or a habit.~18%
“One cold night under canvas cured him of camping in October.”
4verbcureTo preserve meat or fish with salt, smoke or drying.~2%
“They cure the ham in salt for three months before it is sliced.”
Patterncure + noun (meat, ham, salmon) · cured meats · salt-cured / dry-cured · curing
5verbconcreteOf concrete, glue or resin: to harden into its final state.~9%
“Leave the resin to cure overnight before you sand it.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 11 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The Latin is care: a doctor cures you with care, and a cook cures ham with care too — salt, smoke, and months of waiting.
hooks ontocare
Cure comes from Latin cura, care, by way of Old French cure, which meant care, healing, and a priest's charge over souls. So the word was about looking after someone long before it meant fixing them. It displaced the Old English hǣlu, which survived down another road as heal.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷeys-
Latin
cura — care, medical attendance, cure
Old French
cure — care, cure, healing, cure of souls
Middle English
cure
English, today
cure
From Middle English cure, borrowed from Old French cure (“care, cure, healing, cure of souls”), from Latin cura (“care, medical attendance, cure”). Displaced native Old English hǣlu, but this survived as heal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA