DictionaryAI

comfort

KUM-furt/ˈkʌm.fɚt/UKKUM-fuht/ˈkʌm.fət/

Pluralcomforts (some meanings)

Verbcomforts, comforting, comforted

7 meanings of comfort

Practice

  1. 1
    noununcountable
    A state or feeling of contentment and ease.

    The retirees live in quiet comfort on a modest pension.

    The new office chairs were designed with comfort in mind.

    Similarease, contentment, well-being, coziness, luxury

    Oppositediscomfort, hardship, distress

    Note

    A French loan that pushed out a native word: Old English frofor, later Middle English frovre, gave way to comfort, which came through Old French confort. As a state it most often follows in, as in sleep in comfort or live in comfort. It can also name a whole household's ease, as in T. S. Arthur's Sketches of Life and Character (1850): "the comfort of a whole family." Its opposite is austerity, the deliberate absence of ease.

  2. 2
    verbtransitive
    To relieve the distress or suffering of someone; to soothe or console.

    Nurses comfort anxious patients before surgery with quiet, patient explanations.

    He comforted the grieving widow with stories of her husband's kindness.

    Similarconsole

    Oppositedistress, upset, trouble, torment

    Note

    Strength is buried in the verb: Late Latin confortō, "to strengthen greatly," from con- and fortis, "strong." The King James Bible of 1611 still pairs it with help: "thou, Lord, hast holpen me, and comforted me." It is transitive, so you always comfort someone. Console is the everyday near-synonym, and besoothe is a rarer one. The Latin meaning survives more plainly in the obsolete "strengthen" sense.

  3. 3
    nouncountable or uncountable
    Something that provides ease, reassurance, or a sense of well-being.

    For many travelers, a familiar meal in a strange city is real comfort.

    Throughout the lonely deployment, letters from home remained her chief comfort.

    Similarsolace, consolation, reassurance, relief, support

    Note

    Here comfort becomes objects. The comforts of home are the warm bed and the familiar meal, the things themselves rather than the feeling they give, and the countable plural is the surest sign of this use. Unlike the consoling sense, nothing has to be wrong for these comforts to count. They add ease to ordinary life rather than relieve a distress.

  4. 4
    nouncountable or uncountable
    A consolation; something that relieves suffering, grief, or worry.

    Mourners drew comfort from the stories shared at the memorial.

    Neighbors offered what comfort they could after the fire destroyed the family's home.

    Similarrelief, consolation, solace, ease, respite

    Oppositedistress

    Note

    Consolation is comfort measured against a loss, which is why it so often arrives with a hedge: "That's a comfort at least," said of a spare tire. Solace is its close synonym, and the old word liss shares the meaning. The grammar splits two ways. Uncountably, people draw or take comfort from something. Countably, a thing is a comfort, usually with an article and often with at least.

  5. 5
    noununcountable
    A cause or source of relief or satisfaction.

    Investors found comfort in the company's steady quarterly numbers.

    The pilot's calm announcement provided some comfort during the turbulence.

    Similarreassurance, relief, solace, encouragement, satisfaction

Less common meanings

  1. 6
    verbobsolete
    To make strong or strengthen; to invigorate or fortify; also, to confirm or corroborate.
    Note

    Here the Latin meaning stands undisguised. To comfort was to make stronger, and an argument could be comforted as well as a body. Richard Hooker writes that God's own testimony "doth not a little comfort and confirm the same," pairing it with confirm in the sense of corroborate. The use is obsolete, so a reader meeting it in older prose should hear "strengthen," not "console."

  2. 7
    verbobsolete
    To assist or help someone; to give aid or support.
    Note

    Practical help, not reassurance, is what this obsolete use offers. Shakespeare's The First Part of Henry the Sixth sets the two words side by side: "I cannot help the noble chevalier: / God comfort him in this necessity!" Help falls in one line and comfort in the next, both meaning aid in a crisis. In older texts, read it as active assistance. That is the gap between this sense and the modern consoling verb.

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Origins

Meanings 1, 3–5

From Middle English comfort, from Old French cunfort or confort, which came from the stem of Late Latin confortō. It replaced the Old English word frofor.

Meanings 2, 6–7

From Middle English comforten, from Old French conforter, from Late Latin confortō ('to strengthen greatly'), itself from Latin con- ('together') plus fortis ('strong').