Basic Details
Word: Curing
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: Making a sick person or an illness better; also keeping meat, fish or tobacco from going bad by drying, salting or smoking it.
Synonyms: healing, treating, preserving
Antonyms: harming, worsening
How to Spell Curing
Syllables: cur - ing
Tricky part: Cure loses its final e before ing. Students often keep it (cureing) or double the r.
Watch out for: cureing, cuering, kuring
Memory tip: Cure drops its e for ing the same way care becomes caring and share becomes sharing.
Usage Examples
Example 1: The doctor says rest and fluids are the key to curing a viral fever.
Example 2: In Goa, curing fish with salt is an old way of storing the catch.
Example 3: Scientists are working on curing diseases that still have no medicine.
Fun Fact
Before refrigerators, salting and smoking were the main ways of curing meat, and dried, salted fish is still widely sold along India's west coast.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
The fishermen spent the afternoon cureing the catch with salt and laying the fish out in neat rows to dry in the sun.
a) neat
b) fishermen
c) cureing
d) afternoon
Show answer
c) cureing. Cure loses its silent e before ing, so the e in cureing has to go: curing.
Word Connection
Choose the synonym of the word curing as used in the sentence:
The new medicine is curing patients far faster than the old one did.
a) healing
b) weakening
c) infecting
d) harming
Show answer
a) healing. A medicine that cures is one that heals; the other three make people worse.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the word in the sentence and choose it:
Grandmother swears that honey and ginger are best for gurnic a sore throat.
a) luring
b) curing
c) during
d) cursing
Show answer
b) curing. During, luring and cursing each need a letter that is not in the jumble, so only curing is left.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Curing fish with salt helps to ____.
a) turn it bright blue
b) make it swim faster
c) make it grow bigger
d) stop it going bad
Show answer
d) stop it going bad
2. Bacon and ham are made by curing ____.
a) pork
b) rice
c) milk
d) cotton
Show answer
a) pork
