cure

pronunciation

How to pronounce cure in British English: UK [kjʊə(r)] word uk audio image

How to pronounce cure in American English: US [kjʊr] word us audio image

Noun:

a medicine or therapy that cures disease or relieve pain
Verb:

provide a cure for, make healthy again
prepare by drying, salting, or chemical processing in order to preserve
make (substances) hard and improve their usability
be or become preserved

Word Origin

cure: cure: [13] The Latin noun cūra ‘care’ has fathered a wide range of English words. On their introduction to English, via Old French, both the noun and the verb cure denoted ‘looking after’, but it was not long before the specific sense ‘medical care’ led to ‘successful medical care’ – that is, ‘healing’ (the Latin verb cūrāre could mean ‘cure’ too, but this sense seems not to have survived into Old French).The notion of ‘looking after’ now scarcely survives in cure itself, but it is preserved in the derived nouns curate [14] (and its French version curé [17]), who looks after souls, and curator [14]. The Latin adjective cūriōsus originally meant ‘careful’, a sense preserved through Old French curios into English curious [14] but defunct since the 18th century.The secondary sense ‘inquisitive’ developed in Latin, but it was not until the word reached Old French that the meaning ‘interesting’ emerged. Curio [19] is an abbreviation of curiosity [14], probably modelled on Italian nouns of the same form. Curette [18] and its derivative curettage [19] were both formed from the French verb curer, in the sense ‘clean’.Other English descendants of Latin cūra include scour, secure, and sinecure.=> curate, curious, scour, secure, sinecure

cure (n.1): c. 1300, "care, heed," from Latin cura "care, concern, trouble," with many figurative extensions, such as "study; administration; a mistress," and also "means of healing, remedy," from Old Latin coira-, a noun of unknown origin. Meaning "medical care" is late 14c.

cure (n.2): parish priest, from French curé (13c.), from Medieval Latin curatus (see curate).

cure (v.): late 14c., from Old French curer, from Latin curare "take care of," hence, in medical language, "treat medically, cure" (see cure (n.1)). In reference to fish, pork, etc., first recorded 1743. Related: Cured; curing. Most words for "cure, heal" in European languages originally applied to the person being treated but now can be used with reference to the disease, too. Relatively few show an ancient connection to words for "physician;" typically they are connected instead to words for "make whole" or "tend to" or even "conjurer." French guérir (with Italian guarir, Old Spanish guarir) is from a Germanic verb stem also found in in Gothic warjan, Old English wearian "ward off, prevent, defend" (see warrant (n.)).