Other forms: healthier, healthiest
Healthy means not ill — strong and well. A healthy child, stay healthy, healthy enough to travel.
It also describes what causes health: a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle. Strictly, healthful is the old word for that second sense and healthy for the first, but almost nobody keeps them apart any more. Figuratively, healthy means substantial or good: a healthy profit, a healthy respect for the weather, a healthy scepticism. Note unhealthy, and health, which is the noun for the state itself.
1adjectivehealthyNot ill; strong and well.
“She was healthy right up until the last year.”
2adjectivehealthGood for your health.
“Try to eat a healthy breakfast, like fruit and yoghurt.”
3adjectivesubstantialSubstantial or good.
“They made a healthy profit and reinvested none of it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
healthy is a state of wellness.
Also accepted in games: fit
Middle English
helthe
English
health
English, today
healthy
From health + -y. health comes from Middle English helthe. Cognate with Old High German heilida. Analyzable as whole, hale, or heal + th. More at heal. a doublet of wholth.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA