carus (masculine), cara (feminine), carum (neuter) (Latin: dearly, beloved, dear; high-priced, costly).

The Romans considered caritas originally to mean "dearness" or "high price". Carus, meaning "dear", is an etymological ancestor of the word "whore". Thus, when Cicero wrote of a year in which the cost of living was high, he used the phrase annonae (crops) caritas. Eventually caritas designated another kind of dearness, the highest love or fellowship—charity as we now know it in the sense conveyed in I Corinthians 12:13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity (love), these three; but the greatest of these is charity (love)."