Care \Care\ (k[^a]r), n. [AS. caru, cearu; akin to OS. kara
sorrow, Goth. kara, OHG chara, lament, and perh. to Gr.
gh^rys voice. Not akin to cure. Cf. Chary.]
1. A burdensome sense of responsibility; trouble caused by
onerous duties; anxiety; concern; solicitude.
Care keeps his watch 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 Cor. xi.
28.
Him thy care must be to find. --Milton.
Perplexed 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 degree. 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, anxious to avoid an evil.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
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