wholesome

adj

Etymology: From earlier holesome, from Middle English holsom, holsum, helsum, halsum, from Old English *hālsum, *hǣlsum, from Proto-West Germanic *hailasam, from Proto-Germanic *hailasamaz, equivalent to whole + -some or hale (“healthy”) + -some. Cognate with Saterland Frisian heelsoam, Dutch heilzaam, German Low German heelsaam, German heilsam, Icelandic heilsamur, Norwegian Nynorsk helsesam, Swedish hälsosam (“wholesome”).

1. Promoting good physical health and well-being.

   “I prethee go, and get me ſome repaſt, I care not what, ſo it be holſome foode.”

   “Everything we do is so wholesome.”

2. Promoting moral and mental well-being.

   “Though hard, my friends, yet wholesome are the truths, taught in affliction's school, whence the pure soul rises refined, and soars above the world.”

3. Favorable to morals, religion or prosperity; sensible; conducive to good; salutary; promoting virtue or being virtuous.

   “A wholeſome tongue is a tree of life: but peruerſneſſe therein is a breach in the ſpirit.”

4. Marked by wholeness; sound and healthy.
5. Decent; innocuous; sweet.

   “Sometimes white Lyllies did their Leaves afford, With wholſom Polly-flow'rs, to mend his homely Board: […]”

   “The more solicitous of the two was Nurse Cramer, a shapely, pretty, sexless girl with a wholesome unattractive face.”