After being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, my boyfriend has discovered the “salutary” effects of a very strict diet that is keeping his blood sugar numbers low without insulin injections.
salutary — an adjective to describe something that promotes health or is curative
saludable — the Spanish adjective cognate of the same meaning that typically simply translates to “healthy”
Our word of “health” and its adjective “healthy” come to us from Old English, so we tend to use these words instead of those that hearken from Latin, but “salutary,” and some other words that may surprise you, come from the Latin word meaning “health” — salus.
In Spanish, the word for “health” is “salud.” People use this word often, especially after someone sneezes. “Achoo!” “Salud.” It’s basically a way of blessing you with health the same way we simply say “Bless you” or “Gesundheit” as I was brought up hearing by my German family — “Gesundheit” is simply a German word for “health.”
I think English speakers in the U.S. would chuckle if I simply said “Health!” after someone sneezed, but that’s what Spanish speakers and German speakers say, and there are probably other languages who do the same thing.
When teaching Spanish for those 30 years, my students would eventually catch on to the word “salud” simply because they heard it so often; after all, teenagers are full of germs, so there was a lot of sneezing in the classroom. Thus, when the word “saludable” came up in their vocabulary lists, they were able to associate it with “salud” and remember it fairly easily.
It wouldn’t have been much of a benefit for them to associate it to the word “salutary” because that word isn’t used very often in English — we simply use “healthy.” However, it does exist, and it is a cognate to “saludable” as is the word “salubrious” which is basically a synonym of “salutary” and comes from the same Latin root. Merriam-Webster differentiates between those two words by saying that “salubrious” is used more to describe the healthy benefits of climate and air, so it’s a good word to use at this time of year when the weather is finally nice, and “salutary” is used to describe healthy benefits that may be unpleasant, so that definitely describes the strict diet of my boyfriend, but he’s adapting to it well even though he misses his sweets.
Another very common Spanish word is “saludos,” which means “greetings.” What’s another word for “greetings” in English that would be a cognate of this word? If you’ve ever read “Charlotte’s Web,” you should know.
The word “salutations” comes from the same Latin word as “salutary.” When we greet people, we should be doing it in a positive way in which we bestow our best wishes upon them, including the desire that they be healthy.
The word “saludo” translates to “greeting” (a word we also got from Old English), but it also translates to “salute.” A “salute” is a sign of respect, and if you respect someone, you want that person to have good health. The verb “to greet” is “saludar,” and that word also translates to the verb “to salute.”
Another synonym for “salutary” is “salutiferous,” but I believe that word is even more rarely used than “salutary” in English. Whether you use “salutary,” “salubrious,” or “salutiferous” in English, though, the Spanish cognate for each is “saludable,” an adjective that typically just translates to “healthy,” but aren’t those other three words more fun?
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Until next time.
Tammy Marshall
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