cure

Etymology 1

From Middle English cure, borrowed from Old French cure (“care, cure, healing, cure of souls”), from Latin cura (“care, medical attendance, cure”). Displaced native Old English hǣlu, but survived as heal.

noun

1. A method, device or medication that restores good health.
   When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose. And the queerer the cure for those ailings the bigger the attraction. A place like the Right Livers' Rest was bound to draw freaks, same as molasses draws flies. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
2. Act of healing or state of being healed; restoration to health after a disease, or to soundness after injury.
3. (figurative) A solution to a problem.
   the proper cure of such prejudices 1763, Richard Hurd, On the Uses of Foreign Travel
4. A process of preservation, as by smoking.
5. Cured fish.
   Well into the twentieth century, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia's Grand Banks fleet stayed with sail power. "The Lunenburg cure," heavily salted on the schooners and then dried on flakes along the rocky sheltered coastline, was traded in the Caribbean. 1997, Mark Kurlansky, Cod, page 128
6. A process of solidification or gelling.
7. (engineering) A process whereby a material is caused to form permanent molecular linkages by exposure to chemicals, heat, pressure and/or weathering.
8. (obsolete) Care, heed, or attention.
9. Spiritual charge; care of soul; the office of a parish priest or of a curate.
10. That which is committed to the charge of a parish priest or of a curate.

Etymology 2

From Middle English curen, from Old French curer, from Latin cūrāre. Partially displaced Old English ġehǣlan, whence Modern English heal.

verb

1. (transitive) To restore to health.
   Unaided nature cured him.
   “Enough, Yet not enough. A bullet through and through, High in the breast. Nothing but what good care And medicine and rest, and you a week, Can cure me of to go again.” The same Grim giving to do over for them both.[…] 2022-06-13, Robert Frost, New Hampshire, A Poem; with Notes and Grace Notes, DigiCat
2. (transitive) To bring (a disease or its bad effects) to an end.
   Unaided nature cured his ailments.
   Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you. 2013-06-22, “Snakes and ladders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 76
3. (transitive) To cause to be rid of (a defect).
   Experience will cure him of his naïveté.
4. (transitive) To prepare or alter especially by chemical or physical processing for keeping or use.
   The smoke and heat cures the meat.
5. To preserve (food), typically by salting.
6. (intransitive) To bring about a cure of any kind.
7. (intransitive) To be undergoing a chemical or physical process for preservation or use.
   The meat was put in the smokehouse to cure.
8. (intransitive) To solidify or gel.
   The parts were curing in the autoclave.
9. (obsolete, intransitive) To become healed.
10. (obsolete) To pay heed; to care; to give attention.