Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Conducive to good health; salutary.
  • adjective Healthy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Full of or in the enjoyment of health; free from disease; healthy: as, a healthful body or a healthful condition.
  • Serving to promote health; salubrious; wholesome; salutary: as, a healthful air or climate; a healthful diet.
  • Well disposed; cheerful.
  • Synonyms and Wholesome, etc. See healthy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Full of health; free from illness or disease; well; whole; sound; healthy
  • adjective Serving to promote health of body or mind; wholesome; salubrious; salutary.
  • adjective Indicating, characterized by, or resulting from, health or soundness.
  • adjective rare Well-disposed; favorable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Beneficial to health of body or mind.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective conducive to good health of body or mind
  • adjective free from filth and pathogens

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

health +‎ -ful

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Examples

  • They build their homes in healthful places, purchase the best fruits, meats, and vegetables the market affords, and buy themselves the ministrations of the most brilliant and learned of the professional classes.

    WANTED: A NEW LAW OF DEVELOPMENT 2010

  • But it didn't take many: I allowed just five per bowl, which kept the soup in healthful low-cal and even low-carb territory.

    Turkey, Tortellini & Watercress Soup ◄ | A Veggie Venture 2006

  • They build their homes in healthful places, purchase the best fruits, meats, and vegetables the market affords, and buy themselves the ministrations of the most brilliant and learned of the professional classes.

    A New Law of Development 1905

  • Thus passed the summer in healthful alternation of study and exercise.

    The Hidden Hand 1888

  • Those children are being denied proper compensation from the unindicted perpetrators as well, while, instead, we get pitiful feel-good crumbs of No Smoking in Bars, and No Smoking in cars with kids, and other "healthful" - "clean air" - legislation.

    Our Stolen Evidence...Against the Pesticide/Dioxin Cartel 2008

  • But Spencer's view was, that anything which rendered a player of billiards less useful to himself, by giving him fewer opportunities in the course of a game for what he would have called healthful and pleasurable recreation, was not only not to be tolerated, but was to be morally reprobated.

    The Upton Letters Arthur Christopher Benson 1893

  • Every physician knows that something more than mere mechanical motion is comprehended under the idea of healthful exercise -- that, indeed, being most healthful which makes us forget all ulterior ends in the mere enjoyment of it.

    Fragments of science, V. 1-2 John Tyndall 1856

  • In a perfect world, the American diet wouldn't regularly include heaping portions of deep-fried bullshit counterbalanced by so-called healthful salads drenched in dressing that's the caloric equivalent of a Snickers milkshake.

    Miami New Times | Complete Issue 2008

  • The first is that which we frequently experience during a walk or any other species of bodily exercise, where, when the whole is at an end, we scarcely recollect any thing in which the mind has been employed, but have been in what I may call a healthful torpor, where our limbs have been sufficiently in action to continue our exercise, we have felt the fresh breeze playing on our cheeks, and have been in other respects in a frame of no unpleasing neutrality.

    Thoughts on Man: His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries 1831

  • Products may be labelled "healthful" and "all-natural," but often they're so processed that they're neither one -- and for all their natural flavoring, they're not so edible, either.

    Ellen Kanner: Meatless Monday: Fun With Farro Ellen Kanner 2011

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