hale

/heɪl/

/heɪl/

Other forms: haled; haling; hales; halest; halely

If you're hale, you’re strong and in good health. Think "hale and hearty," the well-known phrase to describe someone who can lift a piano or work ten hours in a field without blinking an eye.

Don't confuse hale with hail. Hale, again, is healthy. Hail is for hailing a cab, or hailing to Caesar, and it also means a kind of precipitation where frozen ice balls pour down from the sky. Hale is a word that conjures up country folk, farming stock, people who swear that they haven’t had to go to a doctor in ten years because they sleep with the windows open 365 days a year.

Definitions of hale

1. adjective

   exhibiting or restored to vigorous good health
   “hale and hearty”

   synonyms: whole

   healthy

   having or indicating good health in body or mind; free from infirmity or disease
2. verb

   cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means
   synonyms: coerce, force, pressure, squeeze

   types:

   turn up the heat, turn up the pressure

   apply great or increased pressure

   drive

   compel or force or urge relentlessly or exert coercive pressure on, or motivate strongly

   bludgeon

   overcome or coerce as if by using a heavy club

   steamroll, steamroller

   bring to a specified state by overwhelming force or pressure

   squeeze for

   squeeze someone for money, information, etc.

   dragoon, railroad, sandbag

   compel by coercion, threats, or crude means

   terrorise, terrorize

   coerce by violence or with threats

   bring oneself

   cause to undertake a certain action, usually used in the negative

   type of:

   compel, obligate, oblige

   force somebody to do something
3. verb

   draw slowly or heavily
   synonyms: cart, drag, haul

   types:

   bouse, bowse

   haul with a tackle

   type of:

   draw, force, pull

   cause to move by pulling