Daycare

How to spell daycare

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce daycare

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does daycare mean?

1. nounSupervised care for young children (or dependent adults) provided during the working day, or the facility that offers it.

Daycare in a sentence

• The new daycare near the office has space for forty toddlers.

• Both parents work full time, so their son attends daycare from eight until five.

Where does daycare come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern compound built from two very old native English words. The first, 'day', comes from Old English 'daeg', the word for the period of daylight, and traces back to Germanic roots shared across the older Germanic languages. The second, 'care', comes from Old English 'caru' (also spelled 'cearu'), which originally meant sorrow, grief, or anxiety; over the centuries the sense softened from 'worry about something' to 'attentive looking after of something'. The two words were joined in the twentieth century, first in American usage, to name the supervised minding of young children (and later dependent adults) while parents or relatives are at work. Because it began as two separate words and is still sometimes written 'day care', the main spelling trap is simply remembering to close it up into one word.

How the word is built

• day (the daytime)
• care (looking after, tending)