Healer

How to spell healer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce healer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does healer mean?

1. nounA person who cures illness or restores health, especially by means other than conventional medicine.

Healer in a sentence

• The village relied on a local healer for minor ailments.

• She trained for years before earning a reputation as a gifted healer.

Where does healer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word builds on the verb 'heal', which descends from the Old English hælan, meaning 'to make whole, sound, or well'. That verb is closely tied to hal, the ancestor of modern 'whole' and 'hale', so the original idea was literally that of restoring something to wholeness rather than merely treating a symptom. The agent suffix '-er', also of native Germanic origin, simply marks 'one who does' the action, so a healer is 'one who makes whole'. The same hal root also gave English the friendly greeting 'hail' and the word 'health', which is wholeness as a condition. Because the spelling reflects the long vowel of heal plus a plain '-er', the only real trap is remembering the 'ea' rather than 'ee'.

How the word is built

• heal (Old English hælan: to make whole)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)