Other forms: soothing, soothes, soothed
To soothe is to calm somebody, or to ease a pain. Soothe a baby, soothe the pain, a soothing voice.
It works on people and on symptoms alike: soothing a crying child, soothing an itch, soothing frayed tempers. It implies gentleness and gradual effect rather than a cure. Note soothing, which is the form most used; and that the word once meant to prove something true — soothsayer means truth-teller, and sooth is the old word for truth, which survives in forsooth.
1verbcalmTo calm somebody.
“The mother soothed her crying baby by rocking him gently and humming.”
2verbsootheTo ease a pain or irritation.
“This cream will soothe the itching from the mosquito bites.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
soothe is a calming or easing.
Old English sothian meant to prove or verify, from soth, truth. Soothing somebody meant first agreeing with them, and the sense of calming grew from that flattery.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁es- — to be
Proto-Germanic
*sanþōną — to prove, certify, acknowledge, testify
Proto-West Germanic
*sanþōn
Old English
sōþian — to verify, prove, confirm, bear witness to
Middle English
sothen — to verify, prove the validity of
English, today
soothe
From Middle English sothen (“to verify, prove the validity of”), from Old English sōþian (“to verify, prove, confirm, bear witness to”), from Proto-West Germanic sanþōn, from Proto-Germanic sanþōną (“to prove, certify, acknowledge, testify”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁es- (“to be”). Cognate with Danish sande (“to verify”), Swedish sanna (“to verify”), Icelandic sanna (“to verify”). See also sooth. Displaced frēfran, ġefrēfran (“to comfort, console, soothe”), and partially displaced stillan, ġestillan (“to calm, become calm, pacify, quieten”) (whence modern still). The semantic evolution of "to verify, prove the validity of" → "to comfort" (first attested in the late 17th century) comes from the notion of assuaging someone by supporting the truth of what they say.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA