Sanity Once Meant a Healthy Body
Sanity is soundness of mind. The Latin root means healthy in general, and it also gave English sanitary, sanatorium and sane.
Sanity is soundness of mind. The Latin *sanus* it comes from meant healthy in the ordinary bodily sense, and when *sanity* entered English in the 1400s it meant physical health too. The mental sense took over only in the 1600s. The older meaning survives in *sanitary* and *sanatorium*, which still concern the body.
- Soundness of mind. *He questioned her sanity.*
- Reasonableness. *A rare note of sanity.*
- Sanity check — a quick test that something is not obviously wrong. *Run a sanity check.*
- Sane — the adjective. *A sane decision.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | sanity | Public sanity. |
| Adjective | sane | Perfectly sane. |
| Opposite | insanity | A plea of insanity. |
| Adverb | sanely | He argued sanely. |
| Relative | sanitary | Sanitary conditions. |
- Long walks are what keep my sanity intact.Everyday use.
- The court had to determine his sanity at the time.Legal.
- Do a quick sanity check on those figures.Technical idiom.
The sanus family
- Sane — of sound mind
- Sanitary — clean, promoting health
- Sanitation — the systems that keep waste away from people
- Sanatorium — a place for recovery, usually from tuberculosis
- Sanative — rare, meaning healing
Latin *sanitas*, health, from *sanus*, healthy. English narrowed it to mental health across the seventeenth century, while the parallel borrowings kept the bodily sense.
What is a sanity check?
A quick, rough test of whether a result is plausible before anyone spends time on the details. It comes from computing and has spread into general use.
Are sanity and sanitary related?
Yes. Both come from Latin sanus, healthy. One kept the mental sense, the other the physical.