Word of the Day
: March 4, 2024salubrious
playWhat It Means
Salubrious is a formal word that means “favorable to or promoting health or well-being.”
// They picked up several salubrious habits on their wellness retreat in Bali.
salubrious in Context
“Despite their salubrious sounding name, fruit flies ... eat food that is decaying. They inhabit rubbish bins, compost heaps or any place where food is present, including drains.” — Primrose Freestone, The Conversation, 31 Aug. 2023
Did You Know?
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.”
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Name That Synonym
Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of salubrious: s a _ u _ _ r y.
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