in rude health
phrase

- very good health

- strong and healthy

Cambridge Dictionary / Merriam-Webster

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The story begins with reudh-, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root meaning "red, ruddy”. From it cascades a vast family: Latin ruber, rufus, rubrica; Old English rēad; and the English words red, ruddy, robust, rouge, ruby, rust.

The Latin adjective rudis meant rough, raw, unworked, unlearned — related to rudus (broken stone, rubble). The connecting idea is rawness: something in its natural, unfinished state. Unpolished stone. Uncleared land. An untrained mind.

This root also generated erudite (from erudire, literally "to bring out of the rough") and rudiment (a first rough element). The rude in our phrase and the eru- in erudite are the same Latin word — one describing what education removes, the other what nature left intact.

Latin rudis → Old French rude → English, c. 1300, initially meaning coarse, rough, unrefined — of materials, people, and behaviour. The modern sense of "impolite" came later and gradually. "Rude" never originally meant discourteous; it meant unpolished.

The OED records rude applied to a person's body — meaning robust, vigorous, strong — from 1426. The logic is clear: a "rude" body is one in its natural, raw, vigorous state — not weakened by illness or softened by luxury. Rough-hewn. Full of animal vitality.

This sense gradually retreated until it survived in one place only: the fixed phrase in rude health.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SUPER-CENTENARIANS IN RUDE HEALTH

A super-centenarian is someone who has reached the age of 110. This age is achieved by about one in 1,000 centenarians who typically live a life free of major age-related diseases until shortly before the maximum human lifespan is reached.

The longest a human has ever been proven to live was Jeanne Calment, who was born in 1875 and died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. Calment even met Vincent Van Gogh.

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SYNONYMS

alive and kicking, at full strength, back on one's feet, back to full strength, blooming, bouncing, bouncing back, brimming with vitality, built like an ox, bursting with energy, bursting with health, clean bill of health, fighting fit, firing on all cylinders, fit as a fiddle (a butcher’s dog), fit as ever, full of beans, full of life, full of pep, glowing with health, going strong, hale and hearty, hardy, in apple-pie order (excellent health, fine fettle, fine form, full bloom, good nick, great shape, peak condition/form, the pink, tip-top shape, top condition), IN RUDE HEALTH, never better, on top form (top of the world), picture of health, radiating energy, raring to go, right as rain, running like a well-oiled machine, sound as a bell (as a pound), strong as a horse (as an ox, as nails), the picture of health, thriving, tough as nails, up and about, vigorous, well as can be

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, discuss the idea of RUDE HEALTH FOREVER:

The “2045 Initiative”, founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov, is a nonprofit organization devoted to extending life through the replacement of biological organs with mechanical ones. The eventual goal is enabling the transfer of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality, by the year 2045.

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