well [OE] The well meaning ‘in a good way’ and well ‘shaft giving access to water’ are different Old English words. The first provides the first half of welfare [ME]. The start of welcome [OE], on the other hand, is from another Old English element, wil- meaning ‘pleasure’—welcome originally meant ‘a person whose arrival is pleasing’. Wealth [ME] has a basic sense of ‘well-being’, being formed from well in the same way that health [OE] is formed from hale (see wassail). The title of Shakespeare’s comedy All’s Well that Ends Well was already an old saying when he wrote the play at the beginning of the 17th century. The first record of the proverb is as early as 1250. People have been well endowed in a literal sense since the Middle Ages, but men described in this way only since the 1950s, but men could be well hung in the early 17th century. At this time it meant ‘having large ears’ of a dog as well as ‘having large genitals’. The well you get water from is Old English wella ‘spring of water’, of Germanic origin, from a base meaning ‘boil, bubble up’.