Therapy

How to spell therapy

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce therapy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does therapy mean?

1. nounTreatment intended to relieve or heal a physical, mental, or emotional condition.

Therapy in a sentence

• After the operation she began physical therapy to rebuild her strength.

• He found that regular therapy helped him manage his anxiety.

Where does therapy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek therapeia, meaning 'healing', 'service', or 'attendance', which was built on the verb therapeuein, 'to wait upon, care for, or treat medically'. At its root sits theraps, a word for an attendant or servant, so the earliest sense leaned on the idea of looking after someone rather than curing them. It passed into modern European medicine through Latin therapia and was adopted into English in the early nineteenth century to describe the medical treatment of disease. Over time its meaning broadened well beyond physical medicine to cover psychological and emotional treatment, as in talking therapy. The same Greek therap- root gives us 'therapist' and 'therapeutic', and remembering that single shared stem helps fix the 'th' opening and the single 'p' that many writers are tempted to double.

How the word is built

• therap- (from Greek therapeia: healing, treatment)
• -y (noun suffix)