cure

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.”

   “'Cause if there's a cure for this, I don't want it / I don't want it”

2. An act of healing or state of being healed; restoration to health after a disease, or to soundness after injury.

   “Past hope! past cure!”

   “I do cures to-day and to-morrow.”

   “A disease among cattle, called the murrain, then prevailed to a very great extent through that district of Yorkshire. The cattle were made to pass through the smoke raised by this miraculous fire, and their cure was looked upon as certain.”

3. (figuratively)A solution to a problem.

   “Cold, hunger, prisons, ills without a cure.”

   “the proper cure of such prejudices”

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.”

6. A process of solidification or gelling.
7. A process whereby a material is caused to form permanent molecular linkages by exposure to chemicals, heat, pressure or weathering.
8. (obsolete)Care, heed, or attention.

   “vicarages of great cure, but small value”

9. Spiritual charge; care of soul; the office of a parish priest or of a curate.

   “This worke devysed is For suche as do amys, And specyally to controule Such as have cure of soule, […] No good priest to offende, But suche dawes to amend, […]”

   “[T]he Appropriator was the incumbent Parſon, and had the Cure of the Souls of the Pariſhioners, and that upon the Preſentation of the Appropriation, or upon the Diſſolution of the Abbey, the Church became void, and preſentative, as other Churches upon Reſignation, or Death of the Incumbent.”

   “During this interval, my thoughts were employed on some future means of supporting them; and at last a small Cure of fifteen pounds a year was offered me in a distant neighbourhood, where I could still enjoy my principles without molestation.”

10. That which is committed to the charge of a parish priest or of a curate.
11. (UK, obsolete, slang)An eccentric person.

    “The mud was thick — the crossing clean — / A well dressed man, genteel of mien — / Walked through the first (he might be poor), / The sweeper muttered, "He's a Cure."”

    “He’s quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does look a cure.”

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.”

2. (transitive)To bring (a disease or its bad effects) to an end.

   “Unaided nature cured his ailments.”

   “Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, / Is able with the change to kill and cure.”

   “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.”

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 undergo 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. (intransitive, obsolete)To become healed.

   “One desperate grief cures with another's languish.”

10. (obsolete)To pay heed; to care; to give attention.

name

1. A surname.