Meanings
comparative more healy-feely · superlative most healy-feely
- derogatoryinformalRelating to, or believing in, New Age pseudoscience.
As anyone who has been around the healy-feely crowd long enough knows, the second Noble Truth of Buddhism states that the cause of all suffering is attachments.
2018, Paul M. Cole, POW/MIA Accounting: Volume I2 more examples
Not to get all healy-feely on you or anything, but I believe that is what they call a “breakthrough” in the therapy game. For one thing, it shed some light on a behavior I'm now working through […]
2012, Dan Zevin, he Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up[…] much more palatable to me than talking of chakras and clearing bad energy. It sounded more magical, less New Age. Once we settled on a not too healy-feely compromise, we sent out email flyers to everyone we knew.
2012, Lone Morch, Seeing Red: A Woman's Quest for Truth, Power, and the Sacred
Origin
From heal + -y (from how New Age pseudoscience often promotes a "healing" narrative to sell products) + feely (from the importance of feelings and emotions in such practices).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
healy-feely. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/healy-feely
“healy-feely.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/healy-feely. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “healy-feely,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/healy-feely.
Source: healy-feely on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.