soothe
/suːð/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.18 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Muſick has Charms to ſooth a ſavage Breaſt, To ſoften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak."
- "Yet Wayne Rooney scored at a good time, three minutes after the restart, to soothe any gathering nerves and the night can ultimately be chalked off as one of the finest occasions of Hodgson's 17 months in the job."
- "I am a cider drinker, I drinks it all of the day I am a cider drinker, it soothes all me troubles away"
- "To be ſhort, a wretched and curſed generation they be; hypocrites, pretending friendſhip, but they can not skill of plaine dealing and franke ſpeech. Rich men they claw, ſooth up and flatter: the poore they contemne and despiſe."
Etymology
From Middle English sothen (“to verify, prove the validity of”), from Old English sōþian (“to verify, prove, confirm, bear witness to”), from Proto-West Germanic *sanþōn, from Proto-Germanic *sanþōną (“to prove, certify, acknowledge, testify”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- (“to be”). Cognate with Danish sande (“to verify”), Swedish sanna (“to verify”), Icelandic sanna (“to verify”). See also sooth. Displaced Old English frēfran, ġefrēfran (“to comfort, console, soothe”), and partially displaced Old English stillan, ġestillan (“to calm, become calm, pacify, quieten”) (whence modern still). The semantic evolution of "to verify, prove the validity of" → "to comfort" (first attested in the late 17th century) comes from the notion of assuaging someone by supporting the truth of what they say.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₁es-, sothen, sōþian, *sanþōn, *sanþōną