Remedy

How to spell remedy

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce remedy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does remedy mean?

1. nounA medicine or treatment for an illness, or a means of correcting an undesirable situation.
2. verbTo put right, correct, or counteract a problem or fault.

Remedy in a sentence

• noun

  The pharmacist recommended a simple remedy for the persistent cough.

• verb

  The council promised to remedy the flooding before the winter.

• noun

  Hiring more staff is the obvious remedy for the long waiting times.

• verb

  A short apology will not remedy the damage done to the partnership.

Where does remedy come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin remedium, meaning 'a cure' or 'a means of healing', which was built from the prefix re- ('back' or 'again') and the verb mederi, meaning 'to heal' or 'to attend to'. That same healing root mederi also gives us 'medicine', 'medical', and 'medicate', so the family resemblance is a useful memory hook. English took the word during the 1200s through Anglo-French and Old French remedie, originally in the strict medical sense of a treatment that restores health. Over time the meaning broadened from curing bodily ailments to fixing any kind of problem, fault, or wrong, including legal and practical ones. The middle vowel is an unstressed schwa, which is why writers sometimes hesitate over whether to spell it 'rem-e-dy' or 'rem-a-dy', but the 'med' from mederi keeps the 'e' in place.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• med (heal, from Latin mederi)
• -y (noun-forming suffix)