wholeness (holnes)

The state of being whole, complete, entire, or sound; entirene ; totality; completene . There never can be that actual wholene of the world for us which there must be for the mind that renders the world one. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, $72. [With unorig. w , as in whole ; prop., as in early mod. E., holesome ; halsum , wholesome, salutary (not in AS.); prob. suggested by Icel. heilsamr , wholesome, salutary, heill , = E. whole , + -samr = E. -some: see whole and -some.] 1. Healthy; whole; sound in mind or body. [Obsolescent.] Like a mildew'd ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Shak., Hamlet, iii. 4. 65. The purifying influence scattered throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence of one youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome heart. Hawthorne, Seven Gables, ix. 2. Tending to promote health; favoring health; healthful; salubrious: as, wholesome air or diet; a wholesome climate. Or well of Helesey, whose waters, by cause they were bytter salt, and bareyne, ye sayd prophet helyd them and made them swete and holsome . Sir R. Guylforde , Pylgrymage, p. 53. I did commend the black-oppre ing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air. Shak ., L. L. L., 1. 1. 235. The soile is not very fertile, subiect to much snow, the aire holesome . Purchas , Pilgrimage, p. 523. 3. Contributing to health of mind or character; favorable mentally or morally; sound; salutary: as, wholesome advice; wholesome doctrines; wholesome truths. But to find citizens ruled by good and wholesome laws, that is an exceeding rare and hard thing! Sir T. More, Utopia (tr. by Robinson), i. I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. Thoreau , Walden, p. 147. With a wholesome fear of Burke and Debrett before my eyes, I suppre the proper name of the noble maiden. Whyte Melville, Good for Nothing, i. 1. 41. Profitable; advantageous; hence, prosper ous. When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again? Shak ., Macbeth, iv. 3. 105. 5. Clean and neat. [Now only prov. Eng.] For, how Negligent soever People may be at Home, yet when they come before their Betters 'tis Manners to look wholsom. Jeremy Collier , Short View (ed. 1698), p. 22. =Syn. Salutary , etc. (see healthy ), nourishing, nutritious, invigorating, beneficial. wholesomely (hol' sum-li), adv. [ The hende knyzt at home holsumly slepe With-inne the comly cortynes, on the colde morne. Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (E. E. T. S.), 1. 1732. Consideration for his wife seemed a wholesomely pervasive feeling with him. Scribner's Mag . , IV. 749.