Word.ws English Dictionary

soothe

/suːð/

soothe verb: to restore to ease, comfort, or tranquility; relieve; calm; quiet; refresh.

Verb

soothe (third-person singular simple present soothes, present participle soothing, simple past and past participle soothed)

  1. (transitive) To restore to ease, comfort, or tranquility; relieve; calm; quiet; refresh.
    • Muſick has Charms to ſooth a ſavage Breaſt,
      To ſoften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.1697, [William] Congreve, The Mourning Bride, a Tragedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 1
    • 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.2013 October 11, Daniel Taylor, The Guardian
  2. (transitive) To allay; assuage; mitigate; soften.
  3. (rare, transitive) To smooth over; render less obnoxious.
  4. (transitive) To calm or placate someone or some situation.
  5. (transitive) To ease or relieve pain or suffering.
    • I am a cider drinker, I drinks it all of the day
      I am a cider drinker, it soothes all me troubles away1976, The Wurzels, I Am A Cider Drinker
  6. (intransitive) To temporise by assent, concession, flattery, or cajolery.
  7. (intransitive) To bring comfort or relief.
  8. (transitive) To keep in good humour; wheedle; cajole; flatter.
  9. (obsolete, transitive) To prove true; verify; confirm as true.
  10. (obsolete, transitive) To confirm the statements of; maintain the truthfulness of (a person); bear out.
  11. (obsolete, transitive) To assent to; yield to; humour by agreement or concession.
    • 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.1603, Plutarch, “Of the Nouriture and Education of Children”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, The Morals […], London: […] Arnold Hatfield, →OCLC, page 15

soothe meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

soothe in Tamil

அமைதிப்படுத்து, தணி, துயராற்று

soothe in Urdu

تھپ تھپانا

soothe in Bengali

শান্ত করা, ব্যথা উপশম করা

soothe in Malayalam

ശാന്തമാക്കുക, സമാശ്വസിപ്പിക്കുക, വേദന ശമിപ്പിക്കുക, അനുനയിപ്പിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
soothe in Kannada
ಶಾಂತಗೊಳಿಸು, ಸಮಾಧಾನಪಡಿಸು, ಸಂತೈಸು, ಕಡಿಮೆಮಾಡು
soothe in Sanskrit
चप् cap
soothe in Arabic
هَدَّأَ haddaʔa, طَمْأَنَ, سَكَّنَ sakkana
soothe in Indonesian
melegakan

Examples of soothe in a sentence

  • After a night of worrying, nothing soothes the stomach like a tangy bottle of ginger booch.
  • These best-selling under-eye patches are the perfect stocking stuffer—they're designed to soothe, de-puff, and hydrate your skin.
  • His concern soothed her and she breathed heavily, densely, with a thick phlegmish pity for herself.

All 27 example sentences with soothe

Synonyms of soothe

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of soothe

Forms of soothe

third-person singular presentsoothes
present participlesoothing
past participlesoothed
pastsoothed
alternative form (obsolete)sooth

Past tense of soothe: soothed

Origin of soothe

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.

Words formed from soothe

Words that rhyme with soothe

Questions about soothe

What does soothe mean?
Soothe means to restore to ease, comfort, or tranquility; relieve; calm; quiet; refresh.
What is soothe in Tamil?
Soothe in Tamil is அமைதிப்படுத்து, தணி, துயராற்று. See Soothe meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is soothe?
Soothe is a verb.
How do you pronounce soothe?
Soothe is pronounced /suːð/.
What is the past tense of soothe?
The past tense of soothe is soothed.

Words near soothe in the dictionary

  1. sootflake
  2. sootflakes
  3. sooth
  4. soothability
  5. soothable
  6. soothe
  7. soothed
  8. soothen
  9. soothened
  10. soothening
  11. soothens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soothe (page history and authors); soothe (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soothe (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soothe (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soothe (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soothe (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); चप् (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-soothe.ogg.

Cite this entry: “soothe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/soothe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.