What is the meaning of the phrase ‘hale and hearty’?
Healthy, fit and strong.
What is the origin of the phrase ‘hale and hearty’?
The word ‘hale’ is derived from Middle English which means ‘free from defect, disease, or infirmity’. The term ‘hale’ was in turn derived from the Old English word ‘hal’ which means ‘whole’, or in other words ‘all there’, which can be applied in the sense of ‘everything is working well.
The phrase ‘hale and hearty’ is also derived from Middle English, when it was used to describe a person being healthy, fit and strong. The precise first recorded use of the phrase is not known.
There’s also an adjective ‘hearty-hale’ that went into use in the late 1500s, when it was used in the writing of Edmund Spenser, a poet and clerk in Ireland.
Today, the word ‘hale’ is considered somewhat archaic because people generally use the word ‘healthy’ instead. That said, people do still like to use the phrase ‘hale and hearty’ possibly due to its pleasant alliteration.
The phrase ‘hale and hearty’ is typically used to describe someone who has either been unwell and has since recovered, or to describe someone who is remarkably fit and well in old age.
What are some notable uses of the phrase ‘hale and hearty’?
The phrase ‘hale and hearty’ was used several times by the second President of the United States John Adams (1735 to 1826) in his letters to describe his friends and colleagues.
‘Hale and heart’ also appears in the book The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, published in 1820. Charles Dickens also used a variation of the phrase in his book A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859, where he describes a character thusly “He was a strong man, of thirty, with a brown complexion, and was rather hearty than hale.”
