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Salubrious, like healthful and wholesome, describes things that are favorable to the health of the mind or body. (A rather formal and somewhat rare word, it is related by its Latin ancestor salubris to the very common English word safe.) Unlike healthful and wholesome, salubrious tends to apply chiefly to the helpful effects of climate or air, as in “the salubrious climate of the tropical island.” Salubrious seems to be expanding semantically; we occasionally see evidence of it being used as a descriptor of prosperous people or locales. This is the sense used by British author Zadie Smith in her 2023 historical novel The Fraud when she writes: “Following the more salubrious element of the crowd, they found themselves on the second floor of Lady Blessington’s Old Gore House, recently converted into a restaurant by Alexis Soyer.”
Examples of salubrious in a Sentence
Kevin West, Travel + Leisure, 8 May 2026
By then, the salubrious environment that Central Florida’s earliest settlers found had already been transformed many times over.
—Stephen Hudak, The Orlando Sentinel, 4 May 2026
Since its 2017 inception on the doorstep of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, bucket-listers and Hollywood A-listers (allegedly) have flocked to this most salubrious of base camps for gorilla trekking.
—Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 15 Dec. 2025
The Bambino, Babe Ruth himself, came for spring training beginning around 1915 and credited the natural hot springs baths with having a salubrious effect on him.
—Matthew Carey, Deadline, 9 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for salubrious
Cite this Entry
“Salubrious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/salubrious. Accessed 15 Jun. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
salubrious
adjective
Medical Definition
salubrious
adjective
