Therapeutics

How to spell therapeutics

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce therapeutics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does therapeutics mean?

1. nounThe branch of medicine concerned with the treatment of disease and the use of remedies.

Therapeutics in a sentence

• The new drug shows real promise in cancer therapeutics.

• Her postgraduate course covered the therapeutics of chronic pain.

Where does therapeutics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek therapeutikos, an adjective meaning 'inclined to care for or to heal', which itself grew from the verb therapeuein, 'to attend to, to wait upon, or to treat medically'. The underlying noun therapon described an attendant or servant, so the original idea was less about chemistry and more about devoted care given to another person. Greek therapeutike (techne) meant the healing art, and Latin borrowed the form as therapeutica before it travelled into English in the early 1600s as a label for the branch of medicine dealing with the treatment of disease. The familiar plural-style ending -ics, seen also in mathematics and physics, marks it as a body of knowledge rather than a single thing. The same Greek root sits inside the everyday word 'therapy', and remembering that link helps with the spelling, since both keep the tricky 'eu' cluster that English pronounces as 'yoo'.

How the word is built

• therapeut- (from Greek therapeutikos: caring for, healing)
• -ics (suffix denoting a field of study or practice)