• Health

    Pronunciation

    • enPR: hÄ•lth, IPA: /hÉ›lθ/
    • Rhymes: -É›lθ

    Alternative forms

    Origin

    From Middle English helthe, from Old English hǣlþ.

    Full definition of health

    Noun

    health

    (usually uncountable; plural healths)
    1. The state of being free from physical or psychological disease, illness, or malfunction; wellness. from 11th c.
      • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 4, Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.
    2. I think she suffers from autism, ADHD or some other mental health problem.
    3. A state of well-being or balance, often physical but sometimes also mental and social; the overall level of function of an organism from the cellular (micro) level to the social (macro) level.
    4. Physical condition.
    5. (obsolete) Cure, remedy. 11th-16th c.
      • 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVII:And she myght have a dysshfulle of bloode of a maydyn and a clene virgyne in wylle and in worke, and a kynges doughter, that bloode sholde be her helth, for to anoynte her withall.
    6. (countable) A toast to prosperity. from 17th c.
      • 2002, Joshua Scodel, Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature‎, Strikingly, however, Waller does not deny but rather revels in the claim that healths lead to excessive drinking

    Related terms

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