heal

Formsheals, healing, healed

Pluralheals

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To make someone better from a disease or wound; to cure or revive.

   The new treatment helped heal her infected wound within days.

   Antibiotics heal bacterial infections that would otherwise grow worse.

   Similarcure, mend

   Note

   At its root the word is about wholeness. Old English hǣlan comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "safe, unharmed" and was formed from the adjective that became whole, so to heal was to make whole again. The Old English verb could also mean "save" and "greet." The object can be the sufferer, as in the King James Bible of 1611 ("my servant shall be healed"), or the wound itself ("heal your cut").

2. 2
   verbintransitive

   To become healthy or sound again, as a wound or injury does.

   Her sprained ankle healed completely after a few weeks of rest.

   Deep wounds heal more slowly than shallow scratches.

   Similarmend, recover

   Note

   Here the wound or the patient is the subject, and the change happens of its own accord: cuts heal, ankles heal. Compare the curing sense, where something else does the work, as when a bandage helps to heal your cut. Ask who does the healing to tell the two apart. When bandages merely allow cuts to heal, the healing belongs to the body.

3. 3
   verbfigurativelytransitive

   To repair a rift or settle a disagreement, making things whole again, or to absolve someone of guilt.

   The treaty finally healed the divisions that had split the nation for decades.

   Time alone cannot heal a betrayal this deep.

   Similarmend, repair, bridge

   Note

   The figurative extension keeps the old idea of making whole, but what is healed is a rift rather than a wound. Its natural objects are divisions and hurts, such as dissensions or a broken heart. It also reaches into unlikely corners. The 1945 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on a Global Alphabet speaks of a weak spot in English spelling that "can be easily healed" by a new alphabet.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A spell or special ability, as in a role-playing game, that gives back lost hit points or cures a harmful status effect.

   The cleric's heal restored half the party's hit points in a single turn.

   Players save their strongest heals for the boss fights.

   Note

   Gamers turn the verb into a countable noun for the spell itself: a passing priest "casts a heal on her." The usual verb is cast, with on marking the target. Paul Emmerich's Beginning Lua with World of Warcraft Add-ons (2009) describes a macro that "casts a heal on" a friendly target. Compare healing as an effect, which measures what is received rather than counting the spells.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountableplural

   The restoration of health or hit points; an instance of healing within a game.

   Their strategy depended on constant heal from the back line.

   Burst damage can easily overwhelm steady heal.

   Note

   Where the spell is something you cast, heals in the plural can mean healing as a supply a player needs. "Give me heals! I need healing!" is the cry of someone running low. The noun also works as a mass word for the effect, as in constant heal or steady heal. That use belongs to game talk and reads oddly outside it.

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