CARE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Care

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/kɛr/ Listen

noun

Care n.

1.

A burdensome sense of responsibility; trouble caused by onerous duties; anxiety; concern; solicitude. "Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, And where care lodges, sleep will never lie."

2.

Charge, oversight, or management, implying responsibility for safety and prosperity. "The care of all the churches." "Him thy care must be to find." "Perplexed with a thousand cares."

3.

Attention or heed; caution; regard; heedfulness; watchfulness; as, take care; have a care. "I thank thee for thy care and honest pains."

4.

The object of watchful attention or anxiety. "Right sorrowfully mourning her bereaved cares."

Synonyms: Anxiety; solicitude; concern; caution; regard; management; direction; oversight. Care, Anxiety, Solicitude, Concern. These words express mental pain in different degress. Care belongs primarily to the intellect, and becomes painful from overburdened thought. Anxiety denotes a state of distressing uneasiness fron the dread of evil. Solicitude expresses the same feeling in a diminished degree. Concern is opposed to indifference, and implies exercise of anxious thought more or less intense. We are careful about the means, solicitous and anxious about the end; we are solicitous to obtain a good, anxious to avoid an evil.

verb

Care v. i. (past & past part. cared; pres. part. caring) To be anxious or solicitous; to be concerned; to have regard or interest; sometimes followed by an objective of measure. "I would not care a pin, if the other three were in." "Master, carest thou not that we perish?"

To care for.

(a)

To have under watchful attention; to take care of.

(b)

To have regard or affection for; to like or love. "He cared not for the affection of the house."

See images of 'Care'

Etymology of 'Care'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Care" Quotes from Famous Books

... Monsieur and Madame Hochon, of Agathe, and Joseph (the latter much amazed at the scrupulous care of the old people in the choice of words), were delivered of the following answer, concocted solely for the benefit ...

— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... the loveliest time. And as for wars and rumours of wars, you surely know enough of me to be aware that I like that also a thousand times better than decrepit peace in Middlesex? I do not quite like politics; I am too aristocratic, I fear, for that. God knows I don't care who I chum with; perhaps like sailors best; but to go round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together - never. My imagination, which is not the least damped by the idea of having my head cut off in the bush, recoils aghast from the idea of a life like Gladstone's, and the shadow of the newspaper ...

— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... everywhere giving. The hospital and its arrangements were very perfect. The well-kept floor, the clean cots, and the very small number of about twenty inmates out of a strength of 2,000, may be taken as indicative of the care in all other sanitary arrangements. Both the sickness and mortality seems very small. I have been much gratified with what I have seen, and have learned some points of interest ...

— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

... greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my continuance in office. There was one man, especially, the observation of whose character ...

— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that Mustad and his companions would be on the alert to note the course taken by Everson, so as to learn what had become of his friends, the young man saw the need of misleading them. He took care not to return to the river over his own trail. Instead of doing so he moved to the right, as if on his way to the nearby town of Akwar. When satisfied he was beyond range of the keen vision of those ...

— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

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