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REFERENCE

hygiene

n.
US //ˈhaɪˌdʒin// UK //hˈaɪdʒiːn// hy·giene
  1. 1 cleanliness and health (n.)
    B1 Intermediate

    the habit of keeping your body and your home clean to stay healthy.

    the conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases.

    Example

    Good dental hygiene involves brushing your teeth at least twice a day.

    Example

    The restaurant was closed by inspectors after they discovered several serious breaches of basic food hygiene in the kitchen.
  2. 2 the study of health (n.)
    B2 Upper Intermediate Academic Medicine

    the area of science that studies how to stay healthy and prevent illness.

    the branch of medical science that deals with the preservation of health.

    Example

    She decided to study public hygiene to help improve her city's water system.

    Example

    Nineteenth-century advancements in the science of hygiene significantly reduced mortality rates in rapidly growing urban centres.
    • hygienics
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  1. 3 programming safety (n.)
    C2 Proficiency Technical Slang Computing

    a way of writing code so that names of things do not get mixed up by accident.

    a property of macro expansion systems that ensures identifiers introduced by a macro do not accidentally capture identifiers in the surrounding code.

    Example

    The programmer checked the macro hygiene to make sure the variables were safe.

    Example

    Without proper hygiene in the macro system, the compiler might inadvertently shadow local variables, leading to unpredictable runtime behaviour.

    Usage

    Often used as an uncountable noun in the context of 'macro hygiene'.
    • macro hygiene
Origin

From French hygiène, from Ancient Greek ὑγιεινή (τέχνη) (hugieinḗ (tékhnē), literally “art of health”), from ὑγιεινός (hugieinós, “of health, good for the health, wholesome, sound, healthy”), from ὑγιής (hugiḗs, “healthy, sound”).

Word family

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