Word.ws English Dictionary

valetudinary

valetudinary adjective: sickly, infirm, valetudinarian.

Adjective

valetudinary (comparative more valetudinary, superlative most valetudinary)

  1. (obsolete) Sickly, infirm, valetudinarian.
    • "His Majesty began to become valetudinary; and the hypochondria which tormented him rendered his humor very melancholy.1727, Thomas Carlyle, History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.)
    • It produces a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other.1887, Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12)

Noun

valetudinary (plural valetudinaries)

  1. (dated) A sickly, infirm person.

Synonyms of valetudinary

Forms of valetudinary

Adjective
comparativemore valetudinary
superlativemost valetudinary
Noun
pluralvaletudinaries

Origin of valetudinary

From Latin valētūdin- + -ary, from oblique stem of Latin valētūdō, from valeō + -tūdō. By surface analysis, valetude + -arian. Doublet of valetudinarious.

Words formed from valetudinary

Questions about valetudinary

What does valetudinary mean?
Valetudinary means sickly, infirm, valetudinarian.
What part of speech is valetudinary?
Valetudinary can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near valetudinary in the dictionary

  1. valetudinarians
  2. valetudinaries
  3. valetudinariness
  4. valetudinarious
  5. valetudinarium
  6. valetudinary
  7. valetudinous
  8. Valetudo
  9. valew
  10. valeward
  11. valewe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: valetudinary (page history and authors). 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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