Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Conducive to sound health or well-being; salutary: simple, wholesome food; a wholesome climate.
- adj. Promoting mental, moral, or social health: wholesome entertainment.
- adj. Sound; healthy. See Synonyms at healthy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Healthy; whole; sound in mind or body.
- Tending to promote health; favoring health; healthful; salubrious: as, wholesome air or diet; a wholesome climate.
- Contributing to health of mind or character; favorable mentally or morally; sound; salutary: as, wholesome advice; wholesome doctrines; wholesome truths.
- Profitable; advantageous; hence, prosperous.
- Clean and neat.
- Synonyms Salutary, etc. (see healthy), nourishing, nutritious, invigorating, beneficial.
Wiktionary
- adj. Promoting good health and well-being.
- adj. Promoting moral and mental well-being.
- adj. Sound and healthy.
- adj. Promoting virtue or being virtuous.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Tending to promote health; favoring health; salubrious; salutary.
- adj. Contributing to the health of the mind; favorable to morals, religion, or prosperity; conducive to good; salutary; sound.
- adj. obsolete Sound; healthy.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. conducive to or characteristic of physical or moral well-being
- adj. sound or exhibiting soundness in body or mind
Etymologies
- whole + -some (Wiktionary)
- Middle English holsom, from Old English *hālsum. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Thankfully, Davila seems committed to keeping the title wholesome and honest.”
365 Reasons to Love Comics #316 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources
“His vigorous will seemed to dominate over the whole household; he would drag me out peremptorily for what he called wholesome exercise, which meant long, scrambling walks, which sent me home with tingling pulses and exuberant spirits, until the atmosphere of the sick room moderated and subdued them again.”
“That is what I call wholesome and healthy - so we are as we always were prior to this little blip.”
“Just good lookin ', wholesome gals I wished lived next door.”
Why I Hate the Booth Babe Story, a Guest Editorial by Holly A.
“They can be made dairy free, still be delicious, and contain wholesome goodness.”
“The taste of the public has, of late years, been accustomed to very high stimulants: no plain wholesome food will go down; and every thing must be hashed and stewed with some "sauce piquante," which however delicious to one palate, may be very offensive and disgusting to another.”
“When they eat they get together, three or four of them in wholesome fellowship.”
“Being of Somo, No-ola, Langa-Langa, and far Malu they were in wholesome fear, did they lose the protection of their white masters, of being eaten by the Su'u folk, just as the Su'u boys would have feared being eaten by the Somo and Langa-Langa and”
“The poor should know how much more wholesome is a broth made from remnants of stale bread, than soups of coarse spaghetti – often dry and seasoned with meat juice.”
“Oswald does not particularly want his story to be remembered, but he wishes to tell the truth, and perhaps it is what father calls a wholesome discipline to lay bare the awful facts.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘wholesome’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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In The Name Of All That Is Good And H...
Here you will find pieholes rather than piety. If you seek that which is holy, you must find the list In The Name Of All That Is Good And Holy... by uselessness.
piehole, doughnut hole, cakehole, the rabbit hole, hole in one, Swiss cheese, potatohole, three-hole punch, portable hole, hellhole, cholent, cholera and 89 more...
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common UA vocab. in US
Interesting, there is a traditional vocabulary of an Ukrainian, that differs from vocabulary of average American. It would be nice to explore it.
jackdaw, incongruous, cassock, vivid, magpie, humdrum, amongst, wonder, wandering, wheedling, wheedle, osseous and 368 more...
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-some
How I love that old English suffix
tricksome, winsome, meddlesome, handsome, fulsome, lonesome, lovesome, noisome, wholesome, loathsome, cumbersome, lustsome and 16 more...
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Duelistic
One-word oxymorons and dvandva (copulative compound (hot)) words with that contradictory, antonymic tension. Hyphens are fine, and neologisms are great, but I don't want any portmanteau words (I c...
bittersweet, push-pull, crosscurrent, featherweight, butthead, wholesome, firewater, homework, lovesick, nevermore, oxymoron, inside-out and 62 more...
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GRE
trope, surreptitious, tenet, insular, munificent, exegesis, limpid, acerbic, litany, cupidity, restive, protract and 260 more...
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out of interest
lithesome, wholesome, gruesome, tiresome, worrisome, cumbersome, lonesome, loathsome, burdensome, fearsome, wearisome, irksome and 97 more...
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GRE
high frequent
industrious, feckless, debunk, quintessence, loquacious, obsequious, laconic, plethora, lugubrious, serendipity, facetious, turgid and 261 more...
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just words.
coquette, solecism, peripherally, recrudescence, viscid, turpitude, sententious, light-heeled, interminably, unflappable, palpably, solicitous and 215 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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deegee's Words
pay-per-view, vitriol, delectable, snarky, unflinching, forsake, pervasive, inconsequential, unnerving, allure, endearing, unalloyed and 414 more...
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wh pronounced as h
words that start with wh but pronounced as h (as in hand)
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adjectives
sartorial, saucy, wieldy, wuthering, dilapidated, rough-and-ready, flabbergasted, ravishing, seminal, snooty, galore, scrumptious and 386 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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[GRE] 10 Apr 2013
despondency, fruition, elation, wholesome, waffle, rail, grieve, mince, candor, staunch, bicker, weary and 104 more...
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I'd rather not say
words that grate on my nerves (mainly because of the way they sound, not what they mean)
yogurt, belly, asthma, spruce, daisy, rutabaga, petunia, toot, fecal, oodles, pansy, buddy and 20 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for wholesome.

Prolagus See Crappie (food). Sep 14, 2008