Skip to content
Allin

unhealthy

adjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United States//ʌnˈhɛl.θi//
  • India//ənˈhɛːl.d̪i//
  • India//ənˈhɛːl.t̪hi//
  • India//ˈən.(h)el.d̪i//
  • India//ˈən.(h)el.t̪i//

Characterized by, or conducive to poor health.

adjective

  1. 1

    Characterized by, or conducive to poor health.

    The villagers lived in unhealthy surroundings.

    “When left to their own devices, people who are extremely narcissistic in this unhealthy way are not going to change,” said Dr. Malkin, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the research.

    It makes up an estimated 73 percent of the U.S. food supply, and contains stereotypically “unhealthy” products like sodas, candies and hot dogs as well as seemingly “healthy” ones like whole grain breads, breakfast cereals, flavored yogurts and plant milks.

  2. 2

    Sick or ill.

    He was an unhealthy child.

    ‘And at once he'll be on his high-horse – he knows everything! – and he'll prove, prove, that all unhealthy children must be lethal-chambered or the world will go to pieces.’

  3. 3

    Tending to corrupt.

    He liked unhealthy reading material.

  4. 4

    Characterized by disturbed mental health.

    He had an unhealthy interest in fire.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Germanic *un- Proto-West Germanic *un- Old English un- Middle English un- English un- Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ilos Proto-Germanic *hailaz Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂der. Proto-Germanic *-iþō Proto-Germanic *hailiþō Proto-West Germanic *hailiþu Old English hǣlþ Middle English helthe English health Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English healthy English unhealthy From un- + healthy.

Forms

comparative
unhealthier, more unhealthy
superlative
unhealthiest, most unhealthy
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).