To cherish is both to hold dear and to treat as dear. Mere unexpressed esteem would not be cherishing. In the marriage vow, "to love, honor, and cherish," the word cherish implies all that each can do by love and tenderness for the welfare and happiness of the other, as by support, protection, care in sickness, comfort in sorrow, sympathy, and help of every kind. To nurse is to tend the helpless or feeble, as infants, or the sick or wounded. To nourish is strictly to sustain and build up by food; to nurture includes careful mental and spiritual training, with something of love and tenderness; to foster is simply to maintain and care for, to bring up; a foster-child will be nourished, but may not be as tenderly nurtured or as lovingly cherished as if one's own. In the figurative sense, the opinion one cherishes he holds, not with mere cold conviction, but with loving devotion.
Antonyms:
See synonyms for [ABANDON]; [CHASTEN].
CHOOSE.
Synonyms:
| cull, | elect, | pick, | pick out, | prefer, | select. |
Prefer indicates a state of desire and approval; choose, an act of will. Prudence or generosity may lead one to choose what he does not prefer. Select implies a careful consideration of the reasons for preference and choice. Among objects so nearly alike that we have no reason to prefer any one to another we may simply choose the nearest, but we could not be said to select it. Aside from theology, elect is popularly confined to the political sense; as, a free people elect their own rulers. Cull, from the Latin colligere, commonly means to collect, as well as to select. In a garden we cull the choicest flowers.
Antonyms:
| cast away, | decline, | dismiss, | refuse, | repudiate, |
| cast out, | disclaim, | leave, | reject, | throw aside. |