faith healing
- healing effected through prayer or religious faith; divine healing.
- a method employing faith or prayer in the hope of receiving such healing.
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Origin of faith healing
First recorded in 1880–85
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for faith-healer
Historical Examples
Have you heard anything about Miss Callender's course as a faith-healer?
The Faith DoctorEdward Eggleston
Now this was the chiefest of heterodoxies to the faith-healer.
Old Times in Dixie LandCaroline E. Merrick
faith healing
- treatment of a sick person through the supposed power of religious faith
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for faith-healer
n.
Also faith healer, attested by 1874; from faith + healer.
The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one of those very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent half of the force and deny its existence. [Mark Twain, "Christian Science," 1907]
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper