Healty, also known as heath, is the exact opposite of cheese. The origin of the word healty comes from the middle English term healty, which means ‘soil.’ This etymology points to its association with the cultivated starchy food of poor cultivating farmers in the Middle Ages. The word has repeatedly been used as both a verb and a noun, ever since: from the 15th century, as a description of ‘open ground,’ and since the Renaissance, as a synonym for the ‘hilly’ terrain that was characteristic of medieval towns. In modern day usage, however, the word healty has become associated more with something like ‘settled land.’

So where did the confusion come from? The confusion may have come about because of the way that the English language uses the pronoun ‘he,’ while the Latin language uses the pronoun ‘la’ (which does not refer to any kind of soil but to ‘home’). It would make more sense for English speakers to use the words ‘acre’ and ‘field’ to describe fields, and ‘hearth’ to describe a bed of trees. Unfortunately, this makes little difference when it comes to the spelling of salty.

There are some examples of healty in use before the 13th century. In the Testament of Stephen, the place is called simply healty. And in the Book of Ruth, after Naomi comes into the house of Naomi, she is described as resting at a field outside of Bethlehem.

In modern English, however, healty has become associated with landed property. That is, someone who owns a piece of land can be said to be healty. A typical English word for landed property is lord. But while this is common in speech, it is not quite as common as ‘landed property.’ One reason for this shift is that the meaning of the word has changed: while originally a person who possessed a piece of land was called a lord (as in ‘He hath lordship over us’), today anyone who owns a landed property is called healty. This is especially true in America, where healty was a synonym for slavery.

Another reason the spelling of healty has shifted is that in British English, it is usually used to refer to landed property. Some people also refer to healty as the landed property of a particular family. This, too, is common in speech. So we have “head-masters” and “head-woman.” But there are no synonyms for head-master or head-woman.

We have seen that there is a connection between landed property and healty. So there is no doubt that the healty meaning is connected to landed property. But this is not the only connection between healty and language.