Heal

How to spell heal

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce heal

What does heal mean?

1. verbTo become healthy again, or to make a wound, illness, or injury better.

Heal in a sentence

• The surgeon said the cut would heal within two weeks.

• Rest and good food help the body heal after surgery.

Where does heal come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English verb hælan, which literally meant 'to make whole' or 'to restore to soundness'. It belongs to the same Germanic family as the words 'whole', 'hale', and 'health', all of which trace back to a root meaning sound, complete, and uninjured. That connection is the key to the spelling: to heal something is to make it whole again, and the older idea was that a sick or wounded body was simply incomplete until it recovered. The word has been used in English for more than a thousand years, originally for curing bodily ailments and later extended to mending wounds, broken bones, and even emotional or social rifts. Its long history also explains why it sounds identical to 'heel' (the back of the foot) and 'he'll' (he will), since all three drifted toward the same pronunciation while keeping different spellings.

How the word is built

• heal (from Old English hælan: to make whole or sound)

Words that sound like heal

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• he'll: A contraction of 'he will' or 'he shall', used to state what a male person is going to do.
• heel: The rounded back part of the human foot, below the ankle.