Cherish

How to spell cherish

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cherish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cherish mean?

1. verbTo hold something or someone dear, protecting and valuing them with deep affection.

Cherish in a sentence

• Grandparents tend to cherish every photograph of the family.

• Many couples cherish the quiet evenings they spend together.

Where does cherish come from?

Language of origin: French

Cherish comes from the Old French verb cherir, whose stem in many forms was cheriss-, meaning to hold dear or to treat with affection. That verb was built on the adjective cher, meaning dear or beloved, which itself descended from the Latin carus, literally meaning dear or costly. English took the word in during the early 1300s, keeping the -ish ending that grew out of the French -iss- stem, much as flourish and nourish did. The same Latin carus survives in the modern word charity, originally Christian love, and even in the term caress, all of them circling the idea of holding something precious. Remembering that the heart of the word is cher (dear) helps explain the single r and the -ish ending that trips writers who expect a doubled consonant.

How the word is built

• cher- (from Old French cher: dear)
• -ish (verb-forming suffix from the Old French stem cheriss-)