treatment

American  

[treet-muhnt] / ˈtrit mənt /

noun

• treatments
  plural

1. an act or manner of treating.

   Synonyms:

   approach, conduct, management, handling

2. action or behavior toward a person, animal, etc.

3. management in the application of medicines, surgery, etc.

4. literary or artistic handling, especially with reference to style.

5. subjection to some agent or action.

6. Movies, Television. a preliminary outline of a film or teleplay laying out the key scenes, characters, and locales.

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treatment British  

/ ˈtriːtmənt /

noun

1. the application of medicines, surgery, psychotherapy, etc, to a patient or to a disease or symptom

2. the manner of handling or dealing with a person or thing, as in a literary or artistic work

3. the act, practice, or manner of treating

4. films an expansion of a script into sequence form, indicating camera angles, dialogue, etc

5. slang the usual manner of dealing with a particular type of person (esp in the phrase give someone the ( full ) treatment )

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treatment Idioms  

1. see red carpet (treatment).

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nontreatment
  noun
• overtreatment
  noun
• self-treatment
  noun
• posttreatment
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• treatments
  plural

Etymology

Origin of treatment

First recorded in 1550–60; treat + -ment

Explanation

Treatment has to do with how someone or something is managed or handled. Hopefully you get the royal treatment when you choose the deluxe pedicure treatment! You know how some people treat you with respect but others don't treat you so nicely? You can refer to how people act toward you as treatment. If a restaurant is known for rude treatment of customers, people will stop going there. Doctors also use the word treatment when they discuss a particular medical course of action — such as chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer. The root word is the Latin tractare, which originally meant "drag about," but came to mean "manage, handle, or deal with."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

treatment treatments

Francis spent weeks at Rome's Gemelli hospital, where popes traditionally go for medical treatment.

From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026

Larger trials, longer follow-up periods, and practical methods for delivering the treatment will be needed before clinicians can routinely prescribe it.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026

One trial participant described the freedom of adopting a treatment that did not require medication or an assistive device:

From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026

The doctor advocated for their right to attend a local hospital instead of being required to travel further afield for medical treatment, Pitt Rivers Museum said.

From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026

For Jim Kim, this marked a victory in the long campaign to push down the price of second-line TB treatment and make it available to poor countries everywhere.

From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French

The work also reflects a broader direction in medicine that combines drugs with advanced biomaterials to control exactly where and how treatments are delivered.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 8, 2026

Its focus on higher-value treatments and day-care services should also support growth beyond bed additions, she says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

Reports that a woman employed at a plague research institute in Russia's Irkutsk region died from the disease has spiked online interest in possible treatments for the illness in North America.

From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026

Or you might have seared in your mind the image of the beaked masks that plague doctors wore in the 1600s, which, given the lack of treatments at the time, became closely associated with death.

From Slate ● Oct. 8, 2026

“You’ve started doing your treatments again? Will. That’s awesome,” Hope gushes.

From "Five Feet Apart" by Rachael Lippincott

Related Words

• analysis
• cure
• hospitalization
• medication
• medicine
• operation
• prescription
• regimen
• remedy
• surgery
• therapy