Is ‘wellness’ really a word? It was coined in America (where else?) in the late 1950s to mean: ‘the state or condition of being in good physical, mental, and spiritual health’. It was coined by people who said, in effect, let’s stop focussing on people being ill, or suffering from illness, and focus on being well instead. It has been taken up enthusiastically since then – especially by the alternative medicine group who are more than happy to take money from people who are not especially ill, but who want to buy some ‘wellness’ to add to their present state of good health. These are the people who will tell you that you need to have a holistic approach – so you need the herbal teas, plus the sauna, plus the meditation plus anything else they can attach a price tag to. But does ‘wellness’ work as a real word? How could you use it in a sentence? With its opposite ‘illness’ the answer is clear – you would always use it with a definite article, as in, ‘I’m suffering from an illness at the moment’. You would then name the illness concerned (which might be anything from whooping cough to rabies). But could you ever say, ‘I’m suffering from (or I have) a wellness at the moment’. Oh, really, I respond, and what wellness might that be? What on earth could you possibly reply? ‘I have good skin tone at the moment. And my dandruff has gone away…’ The well-meaning clowns who coined ‘wellness’ did so as a deliberate antonym to ‘illness’ (which has held a useful place in the English language for 500 years). But, well-meaning or not, the concept is inherently incoherent. I think if you have ‘wellness’ that means you are feeling pretty normal at the moment. But this is not something that needs dealing with, or treatment, or can be bought in a packet.