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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

welfare.

Health, safety, happiness and prosperity; well-being in any respect.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈwɛlˌfɛə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈwɛlˌfɛɚ/General-American
  1. Health, safety, happiness and prosperity; well-being in any respect.

    uncountable · usually
  2. Shortened form of "welfare spending", "welfare payments", or "welfare assistance".

    US · informal · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

From Middle English welefare, probably from the Old English phrase wel faran (“to fare well, get along successfully, prosper”) (cognate with Middle Dutch welvare (“welfare”), Middle Low German wolvare (“welfare”), Middle High German wolvar, wolfar (“welfare”)). Equivalent to well + fare. Compare also West Frisian wolfeart, Dutch welvaart, German Wohlfahrt, Old Norse velferð (whence Swedish välfärd (“welfare”)). The first recorded use in the sense of "social concern for the well-being of children, the unemployed, etc." is from 1904 and in the sense of "organized effort to provide for maintenance of members of a group" from 1918.

verb/ˈwɛlˌfɛə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈwɛlˌfɛɚ/General-American
  1. To provide with welfare or aid.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English welefare, probably from the Old English phrase wel faran (“to fare well, get along successfully, prosper”) (cognate with Middle Dutch welvare (“welfare”), Middle Low German wolvare (“welfare”), Middle High German wolvar, wolfar (“welfare”)). Equivalent to well + fare. Compare also West Frisian wolfeart, Dutch welvaart, German Wohlfahrt, Old Norse velferð (whence Swedish välfärd (“welfare”)). The first recorded use in the sense of "social concern for the well-being of children, the unemployed, etc." is from 1904 and in the sense of "organized effort to provide for maintenance of members of a group" from 1918.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.