Unhealthy

How to spell unhealthy

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce unhealthy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unhealthy mean?

1. adjectiveHarmful to health, or showing signs of poor health.

Unhealthy in a sentence

• A diet of fried food and sugar is deeply unhealthy.

• The constant overtime created an unhealthy working culture at the firm.

Where does unhealthy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound built on the word 'health', which descends from the Old English hælþ, meaning 'soundness' or 'wholeness of body'. That noun grew from hal, the Old English root for 'whole' or 'sound', the same ancestor that gives us 'whole', 'hale', and 'heal'; the underlying idea was always one of being complete and uninjured. The adjective 'healthy' was formed by adding the -y suffix, and the negative was made by prefixing the Old English un-, meaning simply 'not'. 'Unhealthy' appears in writing from the late sixteenth century, first describing things harmful to bodily soundness and later extending to anything corrupt, sickly, or morally damaging. The spelling preserves the silent gh of 'health', a fossil of an old guttural sound that English stopped pronouncing centuries ago, which is the main thing a writer must remember.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• health (from Old English hælþ: soundness, wholeness)
• -y (adjective suffix)