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Origin and history of healthy

healthy(adj.)

1550s, "being in a sound state;" also "conducive to health," from health + -y (2). Earlier in the same sense was healthsome (1530s). Related: Healthily; healthiness.

It is wrong to say that certain articles of food are healthy or unhealthy. Wholesome and unwholesome are the right words. A pig may be healthy or unhealthy while alive; but after he is killed and becomes pork, he can enjoy no health, and suffer no sickness. [Eliza Leslie, "Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book," Philadelphia, 1839]

Healthsome is from 1530s in the sense "bestowing health."

also from 1550s

Entries linking to healthy

health(n.)

Old English hælþ "wholeness, a being whole, sound or well," from Proto-Germanic *hailitho, from PIE *kailo- "whole, uninjured, of good omen" (source also of Old English hal "hale, whole;" Old Norse heill "healthy;" Old English halig, Old Norse helge "holy, sacred;" Old English hælan "to heal"). With Proto-Germanic abstract noun suffix *-itho (see -th (2)).

Of physical health in Middle English, but also "prosperity, happiness, welfare; preservation, safety." An abstract noun to whole, not to heal. Meaning "a salutation" (in a toast, etc.) wishing one welfare or prosperity is from 1590s. Health food is from 1848.

unhealthy(adj.)

1590s, "injurious to health," from un- (1) "not" + healthy (adj.). Earlier unhealthsome (1540s), unhealthful (1570s). Of persons, "sickly, lacking health, without vigor of growth," it is attested from 1610s. In World War I military slang, "dangerous." Related: Unhealthily; unhealthiness. Middle English had unhealth (n.) "unhealthiness, ill-health, disease," from Old English unhælþ.

-y(2)

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

*

Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain" (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.

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    respectable
    1580s, "worthy of notice or observation" (a sense now obsolete); 1590s, "worthy of esteem by reason of inherent qualities;" see respect (v.) + -able. Of persons, "having an honest reputation" from 1755; the sense of "moderately well-to-do and deserving respect for morality; occup
    tidy
    mid-13c., "in good condition, healthy," probably originally "in season, timely, opportune, excellent" (though this sense is not attested until mid-14c.), from tide (n.) in the sense of "season, time" + -y (2). Of persons, "of neat and orderly habits," from 1706. Similar formation
    sound
    "noise, what is heard, sensation produced through the ear," late 13c., soun, from Old French son "sound, musical note, voice," from Latin sonus "sound, a noise," from PIE *swon-o-, from root *swen- "to sound." The unetymological -d was established c. 1350-1550 (see D). Sound-boar
    wassail
    mid-12c., from Old Norse ves heill "be healthy," a salutation, from ves, imperative of vesa "to be" (see was) + heill "healthy...
    sane
    "of sound mind, mentally sound," 1721, a back-formation from insane or sanity or else from Latin sanus "sound, healthy,"...Used earlier, of the body, with a sense of "healthy" (1620s), but this has been rare in English....
    hail
    health, prosperity, good luck," or a similar Scandinavian source, and in part from Old English shortening of wæs hæil "be healthy...
    rosy
    From 1590s of healthy complexions. The meaning "promising" is by 1887....
    good
    Old English gōd (with a long "o") "excellent, fine; valuable; desirable, favorable, beneficial; full, entire, complete;" of abstractions, actions, etc., "beneficial, effective; righteous, pious;" of persons or souls, "righteous, pious, virtuous;" probably originally "having the r
    for
    Old English for "before, in the sight of, in the presence of; as far as; during, before; on account of, for the sake of; in place of, instead of," from Proto-Germanic *fur "before; in" (source also of Old Saxon furi "before," Old Frisian for, Middle Dutch vore, Dutch voor "for, b
    you
    Old English eow, dative and accusative plural of þu (see thou), objective case of ge, "ye" (see ye), from Proto-Germanic *juz-, *iwwiz (source also of Old Norse yor, Old Saxon iu, Old Frisian iuwe, Middle Dutch, Dutch u, Old High German iu, iuwih, German euch), from PIE *yu, seco

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