Hygienic

//haɪˈd͡ʒiːnɪk// adj, slang

adj, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Pertaining to hygiene; clean, sanitary, free of disease.
  2. 2
    Whose expansion is guaranteed not to cause the accidental capture of identifiers. slang

    "Of course, anyone with a Scheme background is probably howling at this point because they have a hygienic macro system that makes unintended variable capture impossible. Allowing variable capture when we really, really want it makes Clojure's macro system technically more dangerous than hygienic systems."

Adjective
  1. 1
    tending to promote or preserve health wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
antisepticasepticbeneficialbenignboiledbracing

Example

More examples

"That doesn't seem very hygienic."

Etymology

From French hygiénique. Displaced earlier hygienal.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.