Welfare
noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Health, safety, happiness and prosperity; well-being in any respect. uncountable, usually
"Nothing was too small to receive attention, if a supervising eye could suggest improvements likely to conduce to the common welfare. Mr. Gordon Burnage, for instance, personally visited dust-bins and back premises, accompanied by a sort of village bailiff, going his round like a commanding officer doing billets."
- 2 governmental provision of economic assistance to persons in need wordnet
- 3 Shortened form of "welfare spending", "welfare payments", or "welfare assistance". US, informal, uncountable, usually
- 4 something that aids or promotes well-being wordnet
- 5 a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous wordnet
- 1 To provide with welfare or aid. transitive
"welfaring the poor"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Science and art must contribute to the promotion of human welfare."
Etymology
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.
Related phrases
More for "welfare"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.