unhealthy
/ʌnˈhɛlθi
/adjective (unhealthier, unhealthiest)
1Harmful to health: an unhealthy diet...
- Men don't usually worry about diets or unhealthy lifestyles until they find themselves facing a health problem.
- The average UK diet contains unhealthy levels of saturated fats, with dairy products being the main source of the problem.
- And it could become more of a problem in Asia as unhealthy elements in Western diets are adopted.
Synonyms
harmful, detrimental, destructive, injurious, damaging, deleterious, ruinous, malign, noxious, poisonous, insalubrious, baleful;
risky, dangerous, perilous
1.1Not having or showing good health: his skin looked pale and unhealthy...
- How can we be healthy in a holistic way, if we are deprived this view of ourselves or if we only see ourselves portrayed as damaged and unhealthy?
- Towns were becoming more unhealthy, poisoning themselves with their own human, animal, and industrial wastes.
Synonyms
ill-looking, ill, unwell, in poor health, ailing, sick, sickly, poorly, indisposed, unsound, unfit, weak, feeble, frail, delicate, debilitated, infirm, valetudinarian, washed out, run down, peaky, out of condition/shape, in poor condition/shape
1.2(Of a person’s attitude or behaviour) not sensible or well balanced: an unhealthy obsession with fast cars...
- We know that, where people feel good about themselves and about their environment, they are less likely to indulge in unhealthy behaviour.
- Others would argue, of course, that Dawn and her husband are contributing to our society's already unhealthy attitude toward women.
- The law alone cannot change this unhealthy attitude.
Synonyms
unwholesome, undesirable, morbid, macabre, ghoulish, twisted, warped, depraved, abnormal, unnatural
informal sick
Derivatives
unhealthily
/ adverb ...- ‘There's no doubt that the trend to use spaced out and unhealthily thin models has not died down,’ says the well-known South Beach fashion photographer.
- In most instances, that moment is the first sexual encounter - a moment that is hopefully full of beauty, but oftentimes happens in an offhand manner or, worst of all, hurtfully and unhealthily.
- I'm not entirely convinced that I am lonely… but given how unhealthily grateful I am for any human kindness… well… I have to at least entertain the idea.
unhealthiness
/ noun ...- As well, there is the sentimental subplot thrown in, in which Murray has a daughter who's upset by her father's potentially lethal unhealthiness.
- I tried to write a bit of a story around this record - it's a story about a girl's loneliness, unhealthiness and [her] struggle with beauty.
- But when they talk about the victim culture, I grudgingly shut my mouth in acknowledgement of the unhealthiness of it.