Word Direct Answers

What does "care" mean?

Care: 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.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Attention or heed; caution; regard; heedfulness; watchfulness; as, take care; have a care. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains. Shak.
  2. 3.The object of watchful attention or anxiety. Right sorrowfully mourning her bereaved cares. Spenser. -- 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.
  3. 4.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.
  4. 5.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.

Sources