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Cure vs Mend - What's the difference?

cure | mend |

As nouns the difference between cure and mend

is that cure is a method, device or medication that restores good health while mend is a place, as in clothing, which has been repaired by mending.

As verbs the difference between cure and mend

is that cure is to restore to health while mend is to repair, as anything that is torn, broken, defaced, decayed, or the like; to restore from partial decay, injury, or defacement; to patch up; to put in shape or order again; to re-create; as, to mend a garment or a machine.

cure

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A method, device or medication that restores good health.
  • * , chapter=5
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=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.}}
  • Act of healing or state of being healed; restoration to health from disease, or to soundness after injury.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Past hope! past cure !
  • * Bible, Luke xii. 32
  • I do cures to-day and to-morrow.
  • A solution to a problem.
  • * Dryden
  • Cold, hunger, prisons, ills without a cure .
  • * Bishop Hurd
  • the proper cure of such prejudices
  • A process of preservation, as by smoking.
  • A process of solidification or gelling.
  • (engineering) A process whereby a material is caused to form permanent molecular linkages by exposure to chemicals, heat, pressure and/or weathering.
  • (obsolete) Care, heed, or attention.
  • * Chaucer
  • Of study took he most cure and most heed.
  • * Fuller
  • vicarages of great cure , but small value
  • Spiritual charge; care of soul; the office of a parish priest or of a curate.
  • * (rfdate) Spelman
  • The appropriator was the incumbent parson, and had the cure of the souls of the parishioners.
  • That which is committed to the charge of a parish priest or of a curate; a curacy.
  • Derived terms

    * anti-cure * cure is worse than the disease * cureless * miscure * sweetcure * take the cure * water cure

    Verb

    (cur)
  • To restore to health.
  • To bring (a disease or its bad effects) to an end.
  • * (William Shakespeare)
  • Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, / Is able with the change to kill and cure .
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=76, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Snakes and ladders , passage=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.}}
  • To cause to be rid of (a defect).
  • To prepare or alter especially by chemical or physical processing for keeping or use.
  • To bring about a of any kind.
  • To be undergoing a chemical or physical process for preservation or use.
  • To solidify or gel.
  • (obsolete) To become healed.
  • * (William Shakespeare)
  • One desperate grief cures with another's languish.
  • (obsolete) To pay heed; to care; to give attention.
  • Synonyms
    * (restore to good health) heal
    Derived terms
    * cure-all * incurable * miscure

    Anagrams

    * ----

    mend

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A place, as in clothing, which has been repaired by mending.
  • The act of repairing.
  • My trousers have a big rip in them and need a mend .

    Derived terms

    * on the mend

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To repair, as anything that is torn, broken, defaced, decayed, or the like; to restore from partial decay, injury, or defacement; to patch up; to put in shape or order again; to re-create; as, to mend a garment or a machine.
  • My trousers have a big rip in them and need mending .
    When your car breaks down, you can take it to the garage to have it mended .
  • To alter for the better; to set right; to reform; hence, to quicken; as, to mend one's manners or pace.
  • Her stutter was mended by a speech therapist.
    My broken heart was mended .
  • * Sir W. Temple
  • The best service they could do the state was to mend the lives of the persons who composed it.
  • To help, to advance, to further; to add to.
  • * Mortimer
  • Though in some lands the grass is but short, yet it mends garden herbs and fruit.
  • * Shakespeare
  • You mend the jewel by wearing it.
  • To grow better; to advance to a better state; to become improved.
  • Derived terms

    * mend one's pace
    Synonyms
    * See also