curing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cure.

   Salting and smoking are traditional ways of curing fish for the winter.

   The clinic is curing tropical infections that once had no reliable treatment.

   Note

   One spelling carries both of cure's main lines of work: healing a patient or ending a disease, and preserving or processing something for keeping, as when fish is salted. As a verb it usually takes a direct object (curing fish, curing an infection). That object is the quick test against the noun for the act, which takes of instead (the curing of fish) and can be pluralized as curings.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process by which something is cured, whether healed or preserved.

   The curing of concrete must happen slowly to prevent cracks from forming.

   Salt curing was once the main way to keep fish edible through the winter.

   Note

   An old noun with its own history, reaching back to Middle English curyng and curinge. It can be counted, and the plural earns its keep in Thomas Stephen Szasz's The Myth of Psychotherapy (1988), which sets "medical curings" against "spiritual carings." The plural treats each cure as a separate act, and the near-rhyme with caring sharpens the contrast between treating an illness and tending a person.

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