What does heal mean?
Heal is a common English verb meaning to recover after illness or injury, or to make a person or condition healthy again. It can also describe the repair of emotional, social, or political damage: time may heal a family after a loss, while reconciliation can heal a long-standing rift. The word is neutral and widely used in both everyday speech and professional contexts. Medical writers may distinguish healing, which can begin naturally, from cure, which implies the removal or elimination of a disease. Figurative uses often carry a hopeful tone but do not guarantee that every problem will be resolved. Heal is especially useful because it describes both a physical process and the metaphorical restoration of wholeness. Its history also supports that association: it comes from an Old English word meaning “to make whole or sound again,” and its relatives health, whole, and hale preserve the same root idea of wholeness.
verbTo recover from illness or injury, or to make someone or something healthy again. By extension, it means to repair emotional, social, or other damage.
- To become healthy again after an illness or injury.
- To make a person or condition healthy again.
- To repair or resolve emotional, social, political, or other damage.
"Time and honest conversation began to heal the rift between the two brothers."
"After months of rehabilitation, the athlete began to heal and return to training."
"Generations of diplomacy may be needed to heal the divisions left by the conflict."
Heal and health share the same Old English root for wholeness, so the word carries the idea of making something whole again.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does heal come from?
The word comes from Old English hælan, “to make whole, sound, or healthy again,” from hæl, “whole, healthy,” a word also behind English whole and health. Its Germanic relatives include Old Norse heill and German heil, both meaning “whole” or “sound.” In Middle English, the Old English form developed into heal, while its broad sense expanded from physical recovery to the figurative restoration of damaged relationships or conditions.
Related word forms
How heal is actually used
Heal is standard in formal and informal British and American English. In medical contexts, healing can describe a natural recovery process, while a cure more specifically implies the elimination of a disease or condition.
Easily confused with heal
Heal means to recover or restore health, while a heel is the back part of the foot or the end of a shoe.