cherish
/ˈtʃɛrɪʃ/verb
to care for someone or something deeply
From O.French cheriss- (dear).
Lineage
The story
Imagine affection as something you keep warm in your hands: that is close to the old sense behind “cherish.” In the early 14th century, English took the word from Old French cheriss-, related to cher, “dear,” and ultimately to Latin cārus, meaning “beloved” as well as “costly.” The same Latin word traveled into Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese as caro—a reminder that what we treasure is often what we value. Wiktionary traces the deeper ancestry to Proto-Indo-European *keh₂-, “to desire, wish”; etymonline instead gives the broader reconstruction *ka-, “to like, desire,” so the exact prehistoric form is not entirely agreed upon in the supplied sources. To cherish someone, then, is to treat them as precious—not because they have a price, but because you would not trade them for one.
Modern usage
A personal name used in user-submitted entries for a pretty, caring, or attractive woman.
- Heard in
- user-submitted name descriptions
Words from the same roots
cheriss- · Old French, ‘dear; held dear and treated affectionately’
Derivedcherish, cherished, cherishing, cher
Cognateschérie