Word.ws English Dictionary

hale

/heɪl/

hale adjective: sound, entire, healthy; robust, not impaired.

Adjective (1)

hale (comparative haler, superlative halest)

  1. (dated) Sound, entire, healthy; robust, not impaired.
    • His stomach too begins to fail: / Last year we thought him strong and hale; / But now he's quite another thing: / I wish he may hold out till spring!1731 November (date written; published 1739), Jonathan Swift, “On the Death of Dr. Swift”, in Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols, editors, The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, […], new edition, volume...
    • "Good morrow to thee, jolly fellow," quoth Robin, "thou seemest happy this merry morn." / "Ay, that am I," quoth the jolly Butcher, "and why should I not be so? Am I not hale in wind and limb? Have I not the bonniest lass in all Nottinghamshire? And lastly, am I not to be married to her on Thursday...1883, Howard Pyle, chapter V, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […], →OCLC
    Antonyms:
    unhale

Noun

hale (uncountable)

  1. (archaic) Health, welfare.
    • Then let them vale a bonet of their proud ſayle, / And of their taunting toies reſt with il hayle.c. 1515–1516 (date written; published 1568), John Skelton, “Against Venemous Tongues Enpoysoned with Sclaunder and False Detractions, &c.”, in Alexander Dyce, editor, The Poetical Works of John...
    • Eftſoones all heedleſſe of his deareſt hale, / Full greedily into the heard he thruſt: / To ſlaughter them, and vvorke their finall bale, / Leaſt that his toyle ſhould of their troups be bruſt.1595, Ed. Spencer [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “Astrophel. A Pastoral Elegie vpon the Death of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney.”, in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, London: […]...

Verb

hale (third-person singular simple present hales, present participle haling, simple past and past participle haled)

  1. (transitive) To drag or pull, especially forcibly.
    • For I had beene vilely hurried and haled by those poore men, which had taken the paines to carry me upon their armes a long and wearysome way, and to say truth, they had all beene wearied twice or thrice over, and were faine to shift severall times.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 6, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
    • A ſpacious Breach we make, and Troy’s proud Wall / Built by the Gods, by our own hands doth fall; / Thus, all their help to their own Ruin give, / Some draw with Cords, and ſome the Monſter drive / With Rolls and Leavers, thus our Works it climbs, / Big with our Fate, the Youth with Songs and...1636, John Denham, “The Destruction of Troy, an Essay on the Second Book of Virgil’s Æneis. Written in the Year 1636.”, in Poems and Translations; with the Sophy, a Tragedy, 5th edition, London...

Proper noun capitalized: Hale

Hale

  1. A topographic surname from Old English.
  2. A village and civil parish in Halton borough, Cheshire (OS grid ref SJ4682).
  3. A hamlet in Beetham parish, Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, previously in South Lakeland district (OS grid ref SD5078).
  4. A village in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester (OS grid ref SJ7786).
  5. A small village and civil parish in New Forest district, Hampshire (OS grid ref SU1818).
  6. A hamlet south of Gillingham, Medway borough, Kent (OS grid ref TQ7765).
  7. A hamlet in Cucklington parish, Somerset, previously in South Somerset district (OS grid ref ST7527).
  8. A suburban village in the north of Farnham parish, Waverley district, Surrey (OS grid ref SU8448).
  9. An unincorporated community in Yuma County, Colorado.
  10. An unincorporated community in Jones County, Iowa.
  11. An unincorporated community in Salt Creek Township, Chautauqua County, Kansas.
  12. An unincorporated community in Plainfield Township, Iosco County, Michigan.
Show 7 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. A neighbourhood in southern Minneapolis, Minnesota.
  2. A minor city in Carroll County, Missouri.
  3. A ghost town in Carbon County, Utah.
  4. A town and unincorporated community therein, in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin.
  5. A locality on the Algoma Central Railway, Algoma District, Ontario, Canada.
  6. A town in Korogwe District, eastern Tanzania.
  7. A locality in the south of the Northern Territory, Australia, named after the Hale River.

Adjective (2) capitalized: HALE

HALE (not comparable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of high-altitude long-endurance

hale meaning in Tamil, Odia and Sanskrit

hale in Tamil

to drag or pull, especially forcibly
இழு iḻu

hale in Odia

ହେଲ୍, ହେଲ

hale in Sanskrit

sound, entire, healthy, robust, not impaired
कल्य kalya

Examples of hale in a sentence

  • By night we dragg'd her to the college tower / From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair / With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow, / And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Walking to the Mail”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 51:
  • As well hale a man to court for violation of an unenacted law.1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “IV. Prometheus”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 117:
  • They will hale the King to Paris, and have him under their eye.1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, page 262:

All 11 example sentences with hale

Antonyms of hale

Forms of hale

Adjective
comparativehaler
superlativehalest
Verb
third-person singular presenthales
present participlehaling
past participlehaled
pasthaled

Past tense of hale: haled

Origin of hale

From Northern Middle English hal, hale, variants of hole (“healthy; safe; whole”, whence whole), from Old English hāl, from Proto-West Germanic *hail, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz (“whole; entire; healthy”). See whole for more.

From Middle English hale, an alteration of hele (“health”) after Etymology 1. Cognate with Scots hale (“health”), German Heil (“salvation, well-being”).

From Middle English halen, from Anglo-Norman haler, from Old Dutch *halon (compare Dutch halen), from Proto-Germanic *halōną (compare Old English ġeholian, West Frisian helje, German holen), from Proto-Indo-European *kelH- (“to lift”) (compare Latin ex-cellō (“to surpass”), Tocharian B käly- (“to stand, stay”), Albanian qell (“to halt, hold up, carry”), Lithuanian kélti (“to raise up”), Ancient Greek κελέων (keléōn, “upright beam on a loom”)). Doublet of haul.

Words formed from hale

Phrases with hale

Words that rhyme with hale

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hale

What does hale mean?
Hale means sound, entire, healthy; robust, not impaired.
What is hale in Tamil?
Hale in Tamil is இழு (iḻu). See Hale meaning in Tamil.
How do you use hale in a sentence?
By night we dragg'd her to the college tower / From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair / With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow, / And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.
What part of speech is hale?
Hale can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce hale?
Hale is pronounced /heɪl/.

Words near hale in the dictionary

  1. Haldimand County
  2. Haldimands
  3. haldol
  4. haldols
  5. Haldon
  6. hale
  7. hale and hardy
  8. hale and heartily
  9. hale and heartiness
  10. hale and hearty
  11. Hale Center

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hale (page history and authors); Hale (page history and authors); HALE (page history and authors); hale (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hale.wav.

Cite this entry: “hale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.