Medicare

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A federal program providing health insurance primarily for people aged 65 and older and some younger individuals with disabilities
2. A government-administered insurance system that helps pay for medical care and hospital services for eligible seniors and disabled persons
3. A public health plan aimed at covering healthcare costs for elderly citizens and certain disabled populations

Etymology: Medicare is a blend, a word made by fusing two existing words into one. Its first half is "medical" and its second is "care," and the two overlap in the middle so that the joined form reads naturally. The "medical" part traces back through French "médical" and Medieval Latin "medicālis" to classical Latin "medicus," meaning physician, which itself grows from the older Latin verb "medeor," to heal. The "care" half is the plain English word, so the name literally announces the program as medical care. The blend was a deliberate piece of naming rather than an accident of speech. The program's name packs its purpose into a single compact word, and that compactness is much of why it stuck in public use. Its second element is the everyday English noun "care," which has been part of the language since Old English, so the name needed no special vocabulary to be understood.