Cure

How to spell cure

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cure

What does cure mean?

1. verbTo restore a person or animal to health, or to eliminate a disease or problem.
2. nounA substance or treatment that heals a disease, or a solution to a problem.
3. verbTo preserve meat, fish, or similar food by salting, smoking, or drying.

Cure in a sentence

• verb

  The new antibiotics did cure the infection within a week.

• noun

  Researchers have spent decades searching for a cure for the disease.

• verb

  The farmer would cure the pork in salt before the winter.

• verb

  Rest and fluids will often cure a mild cold faster than medicine.

• noun

  There is still no known cure for the common cold.

• verb

  They smoke the salmon slowly to cure it for the market.

Where does cure come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Cure goes back to the Latin noun cura, which meant 'care, concern, attention', and to the related verb curare, 'to take care of' or 'to attend to'. In medieval medicine the act of taking care of a sick person naturally narrowed into the sense of healing them, and English borrowed the word through Old French in the 1300s with both the 'care' and the 'healing' senses attached. For centuries an English parish priest was called a 'curate' because he had the 'cure of souls', meaning the spiritual care of his congregation, which preserves the original 'care' meaning. The same cura root sits inside curious, secure, accurate, and manicure, all of which involve some kind of careful attention. The food sense, preserving meat or fish by salting, smoking, or drying, comes from this idea of treating something carefully so it keeps. The spelling is short and regular, which is why the trap is mostly the unusual look of the 'cu' before 'r' rather than any silent letter.

How the word is built

• cur- (from Latin cura: care, concern)
• -e