The body and health

Mangiare sano è importante has nothing to do with « sane ». Italian sano means healthy, sound, undamaged: a healthy child, a sound tooth, fruit with nothing wrong with it — and it is the opposite of malato, the other adjective on this page. Both languages took the word from sanus, which in Latin covered the whole person, body and mind at once, and then the two of them split the inheritance. English kept the mind and nothing else. « Sane » says that somebody is not mad; « insane » and « sanity » say it from the other side; and « a sane decision » has drifted further still, to mean no more than a sensible one. For the body English went to its own stock and said « healthy », a word built on « health », which is « whole » in older dress. Italian did the reverse and kept the body. One corner of English still holds the old breadth: « safe and sound » is the Italian sano e salvo, the same two ideas with the halves swapped over, and nobody saying it hears a Latin adjective at all.