aid

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To help or furnish with help, support, or relief. See Synonyms at help.
2. n. The act or result of helping; assistance.
3. n. An assistant or helper.
4. n. A device that assists: visual aids such as slides.
5. n. A hearing aid.
6. n. An aide or aide-de-camp.
7. n. A monetary payment to a feudal lord by a vassal in medieval England.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To help; assist; afford support or relief; promote the desire, purpose, or action of: as, to aid a person in his business, or an animal in its efforts; to aid a medicine in its operation.
2. To promote the course or accomplishment of; help in advancing or bringing about; forward; facilitate: as, to aid the recovery of a patient, or the operation of a machine; to aid one's designs.
3. n. Help; succor; support; assistance.
4. n. He who or that which aids or yields assistance; a helper; an auxiliary; an assistant: as, Coleridge's “Aids to Reflection.”
5. n. In feudal law, a customary payment made by a tenant or vassal to his lord, originally a voluntary gift; hence, in English history, applied to the forms of taxation employed by the crown between the Norman conquest and the fourteenth century. Aids in the narrower sense, whether to the crown or mesne lords, were by Magna Charta limited to grants on three special occasions: to ransom the lord when a prisoner; to make the lord's eldest son a knight; the marriage of the lord's eldest daughter. The legal authority to enforce such aids was abolished in 1660.
6. n. An aide-de-camp: so called by abbreviation.
7. n. plural In the manège, the helps by which a horseman contributes toward the motion or action required of a horse, as by a judicious use of the heel, leg, rein, or spur.
8. n. A deep gutter cut across plowed land.
9. n. A reach in a river.
10. n. In the navy, an officer on the staff of an admiral whose duties are similar to those of an aide-de-camp to a general.

Wiktionary

1. n. Help; assistance; succor, relief.
2. n. The person who promotes or helps in something being done; a helper; an assistant.
3. n. Something which helps; a material source of help.
4. n. UK A historical subsidy granted to the crown by Parliament for an extraordinary purpose, such as a war effort
5. n. UK An exchequer loan.
6. n. law A pecuniary tribute paid by a vassal to his feudal lord on special occasions.
7. n. An aide-de-camp, so called by abbreviation
8. v. transitive To (give) support (to); to further the progress of; to help; to assist.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To support, either by furnishing strength or means in coöperation to effect a purpose, or to prevent or to remove evil; to help; to assist.
2. n. Help; succor; assistance; relief.
3. n. The person or thing that promotes or helps in something done; a helper; an assistant.
4. n. (Eng. Hist.) A subsidy granted to the king by Parliament; also, an exchequer loan.
5. n. (Feudal Law) A pecuniary tribute paid by a vassal to his lord on special occasions.
6. n. An aid-de-camp, so called by abbreviation.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. money to support a worthy person or cause
2. v. give help or assistance; be of service
3. n. the work of providing treatment for or attending to someone or something
4. n. the activity of contributing to the fulfillment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose
5. v. improve the condition of
6. n. a resource