means The state of being whole, complete, and unbroken — nothing missing, nothing left out.

from From Old English 'hāl,' meaning healthy, sound, or entire — the same root that gives us 'hale,' 'heal,' 'health,' and even 'holy' (which once carried the sense of something inviolate and whole). Add the suffix '-ness,' which turns a quality into a thing you can name, and you get the abstract state of being whole. The 'w' was a latecomer, drifting into the spelling around the 15th century, the way it also crept into 'whole' itself. So at its root, to be whole is to be healed — the words were never far apart.