Care

(4), n. [A-S. caru, cearu, O. Sax. cara, Goth. kara, O. H. Ger. chara, Ir. & Gael. car, allied to Lat. cura, care, W. cur, care, pain, blow, throb.] 1. Charge or oversight, implying responsibility for safety and prosperity. “The care of all the churches.” 2 Cor. xi. 28. Him thy care must be to find. Milton. 2. Attention or heed; caution; regard; heedfulness; watchfulness. They shall eat bread by weight, and with care. Ezek. iv. 16. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains. Shak. 3. A burdensome sense of responsibility; anxiety; concern; solicitude; trouble. Nor sullen discontent nor anxious care, E’en though brought thither, could inhabit there. Dryden. 4. The object of watchful attention or anxiety. Right sorrowfully mourning her bereaved cares. Spenser. Perplexed with a thousand cares. Shak. Syn.—Anxiety; solicitude; concern; caution; regard; management; direction; oversight.—CARE, ANXIETY, SOLICITUDE, CONCERN. These words express mental pain in different degrees. Care belongs primarily to the intellect, and becomes painful from overburdening thought. Anxiety denotes a state of distressing uneasiness from the dread of evil. Solicitude expresses the same feeling in a diminished degree. Concern is opposed to indifference, and implies but little exercise of anxious thought. Care respects equally the past, the present, and the future; solicitude and anxiety have reference chiefly to the future. We are careful about the means, solicitous and anxious about the end: we are solicitous to obtain a good, anxious to avoid an evil.