wholesome ( w silent), holesome, holsom, holsum

[Icel. heilsamr = salutary, from heill =whole (q. v.).] 1. Tending to promote health; favoring health; healthful, healthy, salutary, salubrious; as, whole some air or diet. "With wholesome syrups, drugs, and holy prayers." Shakesp.: Comedy of Errors, v. i. *2. Healthy, sound. "Like a mildewed ear Blasting his wholesome brother." Shakesp.: Hamlet, iii. 4. 3. Contributing to the health of the mind; promoting or favoring morals, religion, or prosperity; sound, salutary. "The style of the best writers of wholesome fiction."London Daily Telegraph . *4. Prosperous. "When thou shalt see thy wholesome days again." Shakesp.: Macbeth , iv. 3. *5. Reasonable. "I cannot make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased."-Shakesp.: Hamlet , iii. 2. *6. Salutary, profitable, advantageous, suitable. "It seems not meet nor wholesome to my place." Shakesp.: Othello , i. 1. chin, bench; go, gem; thin, this; "All the chambermaids in such a whobub." Beaum. & Flet.: Monsieur Thomas, iv. 2. whoôp, *whoope, s. [WHOOP, v.] 1. A cry of excitement, encouragement, enthusiasm, vengeance, terror, or the like; as, the whoop of a savage. "Let them breathe a while, and then, Cry whoop , and set them on again." Butler: Hudibras, L. ii. 2. A hooping or hooting cry or noise. *3. A popular name for the hoopœ (q. v.), from its cry [UPUPA], whence Browne ( Birds of Norfolk ) calls it the Hoope-bird. Cotgrave calls it "a sort of dunghill cock, that loves to nestle in a man's ordure," a fable borrowed from cla ic natural history. The habits of the bird during incubation, in leaving its nest in a filthy condition, have con tributed to give currency to the story, and for this reason it is sometimes called the Dung-bird. "As copped and high-crested as marish whoops."Urquhart: Rabelais, bk. ii., ch. xii.