• IPA: /heɪl/

hale (uncountable)

1. (archaic) Health, welfare.

   • all heedless of his dearest hale

hale (comparative haler, superlative halest)

1. (dated) Sound, entire, healthy; robust, not impaired.
   • 1731, Jonathan Swift, On the Death of Dr. Swift

     Last year we thought him strong and hale.

   • 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Chapter V

     "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 next in sweet Locksley Town?"

• unhale

• French: bonne santé, sain, pleine forme
• Russian: кре́пкий

hale (hales, present participle haling; past and past participle haled)

1. To drag, pull, especially forcibly.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 6, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821 ↗:

     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.

   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), act 1:

     The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom / As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim / Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood.

   • 1842, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Walking to the Mail

     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 […]

   • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen, OCLC 12026604 ↗; republished New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919, OCLC 491297620 ↗:

     He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. […] But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again her partner was haled off with a frightened look to the royal circle, […].

   • 1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, 2007, page 262:

     They will hale the King to Paris, and have him under their eye.

• French: haler

• IPA: /heɪl/

1. Surname
2. A village in Trafford, Greater Manchester (OS grid ref SJ7786).