Care (?), n. [AS. caru, cearu; akin to OS. kara sorrow Goth. kara lament, and to Gr. voice. Not akin to cure. Cf. Chary.] 1. A burdensome sense of responsibility; trouble caused by onerous duties; anxiety; concern; solicitude.
Care keeps his wath in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.
Shak.
2. Charge, oversight, or management, implying responsibility for safety and prosperity.
The care of all the churches.
2 Car. xi. 28
Him thy care must be to find.
Milton.
Perlexed with a thousand cares.
Shak.
3. Attention or heed; caution; regard; heedfulness; watchfulness; as, take care; have a care.
I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.
Shak.
4. The object of watchful attention or anxiety.
Right sorrowfully mourning her bereaved cares.
Spenser.
Syn. -- 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 dagree. 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, axious to avoid an evil.
© Webster 1913.
Care, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Cared (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Caring.] [AS. cearian. See Care, n.] To be anxious or solictous; 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.
Shak.
Master, carest thou not that we perish?
Mark. iv. 38.
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.
Tennyson.
© Webster 1913. | 
