UNWHOLESOME

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unwholesome mean? 

• UNWHOLESOME (adjective)
  The adjective UNWHOLESOME has 1 sense:

1. detrimental to physical or moral well-being

  Familiarity information: UNWHOLESOME used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNWHOLESOME (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Detrimental to physical or moral well-being

Context example:

unwholesome habits like smoking

Similar:

insalubrious; unhealthful; unhealthy (detrimental to health)

insubstantial (lacking in nutritive value)

morbid (suggesting an unhealthy mental state)

loathsome; nauseating; nauseous; noisome; offensive; queasy; sickening; vile (causing or able to cause nausea)

rich (containing plenty of fat, or eggs, or sugar)

Also:

harmful (causing or capable of causing harm)

unhealthful (detrimental to good health)

unhealthy (not in or exhibiting good health in body or mind)

noxious (injurious to physical or mental health)

unsound (not sound financially)

Antonym:

wholesome (conducive to or characteristic of physical or moral well-being)

Derivation:

unwholesomeness (the quality of being unhealthful and generally bad for you)

 Context examples 

You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Something—I don't know what, or how—connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Fit habitation for gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Uriah's cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favourite employment.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

What was unwholesome to him he regarded as unfit for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as earnestly tried to prevent any body's eating it.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

There is a strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and rotten books.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)