care
/kɛr/noun, verb
concern, attention, or sorrow about something
From Proto-Germanic *karō (lament).
Lineage
The story
Before care meant checking a child’s homework or watching a pot on the stove, it lived much closer to the sound of grief: the Proto-Germanic *karō meant “lament” or “cry.” Old English caru and ċearu could describe sorrow, anxiety, or the heavy inward pressure of trouble—the sort of mental baggage one carried around rather than set down. Around the same period, the related verb carian meant both “to grieve” and “to care for,” a revealing emotional double act: attention was born from concern. The word’s modern sense of careful oversight appears by about 1400, while “object of concern” arrives in the 1580s. One popular comparison is with Latin cura, but the supplied evidence explicitly rejects that connection: English care is Germanic, carrying an old echo of a cry inside every modern “take care.”
Modern usage
A sarcastic way to mean “I don’t care.”
- Heard in
- youth slang · sarcasm
- See
- Urban Dictionary entries describe “care” as a sarcastic or oppositional response meaning “I don’t care.”