heal

To heal is to get better after a wound or an illness, the body doing its own repair work. A cut heals over in a week, a broken arm heals in six, the skin closes and the scar goes pale.

You can heal something as well as heal yourself: a doctor heals patients, a cream heals the skin, and in older and religious language a healer lays hands on the sick. The word reaches well past the body, into time heals, a country healing after a war, a family healing a rift. Note the split with cure: you cure a disease, but a wound heals, and healing is the slow process rather than the moment of fixing. It sounds exactly like heel, the back of your foot, which is the spelling mistake to watch for.