different between healthful vs adequate

English

Alternative forms

• healthfull (archaic)

Etymology

From Middle English helthful, helþful, helþeful, equivalent to health +? -ful.

Adjective

healthful (comparative healthfuller or more healthful, superlative healthfullest or most healthful)

1. Beneficial to bodily health.
   • 1906, Princeton Alumni Weekly (volume 7, page 210)

     Hockey is an exciting and healthful form of exercise, well suited to college students […]

2. Conducive to moral or spiritual prosperity; salutary.
   • 1926, Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, Folio Society 2008, p. 30:

     As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.

Synonyms

• healthy
• salubrious
• salutary
• wholesome

Usage notes

When a clearer distinction is intended, healthy is used to describe the state of the object, and healthful describes its ability to impart health to the recipient. Vegetables in good condition are both healthy (i.e., not rotten or diseased) and healthful (i.e., they improve the eaters' health, compared to eating junk food). By contrast, a poisonous plant can be healthy, but it is not healthful to eat of.

Derived terms

• healthfully
• healthfulness

Related terms

• heal
• health
• healthy

Translations

English

Alternative forms

• adæquate (obsolete)

Etymology

Latin adaequatus, past participle of adaequare (“to make equal to”); ad + aequare (“to make equal”), aequus (“equal”).

Pronunciation

Adjective

• (US) IPA^(key): /?æd.?.kw?t/, (proscribed) /?æ.d?.k?t/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?æd.?.kw?t/

Verb

• IPA^(key): /?æd.??kwe?t/

Adjective

adequate (comparative more adequate, superlative most adequate)

1. Equal to or fulfilling some requirement.

   Synonyms: acceptable, correspondent, proportionate, satisfactory, sufficient

   Antonym: inadequate

   • 1673, Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, London: Dorman Newman, “Of Habit, and the neatness and property thereof,” p. 61,^[1]

     Proportion therefore your Clothes to your bodies, and let them be proper for your persons. […] Agreeableness […] ought to be exact, and adequate both to age, person and condition, avoiding extremities on both sides, being neither too much out, nor in the fashions.

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 31,^[2]

     Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance […]

   • 1853, Thomas De Quincey, Autobiographic Sketches in Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, “Dublin,” p. 254,^[3]

     […] in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods and the Grattans were not up to the mark.

   • 1903, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Empty House” in The Return of Sherlock Holmes,^[4]

     All day as I drove upon my round I turned over the case in my mind, and found no explanation which appeared to me to be adequate.

   • 2009, J. M. Coetzee, Summertime, New York: Viking, p. 212,^[5]

     John was a perfectly adequate academic. A perfectly adequate academic but not a notable teacher.

Related terms

• adequacy
• adequation
• adequative

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

adequate (third-person singular simple present adequates, present participle adequating, simple past and past participle adequated)

1. (obsolete) To equalize; to make adequate.
   • 1622, Martin Fotherby, Atheomastix; clearing foure truthes, against atheists and infidels, London, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 208,^[6]

     Let me giue yet one instance more, of a truly intellectuall obiect, exactly adequated and proportioned vnto the intellectuall appetite.

2. (obsolete) To equal.
   • 1635, Robert Shelford, Theologia Amantis Deum, or A Treatise of the Divine Attributes in Five Pious and Learned Discourses, Cambridge, p. 227,^[7]

     […] though it be an impossibilitie for any creature to adequate God in his eternitie, yet he hath ordained all his sonnes in Christ to partake of it by living with him eternally.

Translations

Anagrams

• æquated

Italian

Verb

adequate

1. second-person plural present indicative of adequare
2. second-person plural imperative of adequare

Participle

adequate

1. feminine plural of the past participle of adequare