Caregiver

How to spell caregiver

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce caregiver

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does caregiver mean?

1. nounA person who looks after a child, an elderly person, or someone who is ill or disabled.

Caregiver in a sentence

• The caregiver helped her mother bathe and dress each morning.

• As the main caregiver for his disabled brother, he rarely took a holiday.

Where does caregiver come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent modern compound, built from two very old native English words joined to the agent suffix -er. The first element, 'care', descends from the Old English 'caru' (also 'cearu'), which originally meant sorrow, grief, or anxious concern rather than the gentler 'looking after' sense we use today; that older flavour of worry survives in phrases like 'careworn'. The second element, 'give', comes from the Old English 'giefan', reinforced in form by the Old Norse 'gefa', both meaning to hand over or bestow. The whole word simply names a person who gives care, and it rose to prominence in the later twentieth century alongside the growth of professional and family-based health and social support. Because both halves are plain everyday words and the join is straightforward, the main spelling point is remembering it is written as a single solid word with no hyphen.

How the word is built

• care (noun: looking after)
• give (verb: to provide)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)