sickly
English
Etymology
From Middle English seekly, sekely, siklich, sekeliche, equivalent to sick + -ly. Possibly a modification of Old English sīcle (“sickly”) and/or derived from Old Norse sjúkligr (“sickly”). Cognate with Dutch ziekelijk, Middle High German siechlich, Danish sygelig, Swedish sjuklig, Icelandic sjúklegur.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈsɪkli/
Audio (Berkshire, England) (file)
Adjective
sickly (comparative sicklier, superlative sickliest)
- Frequently ill or in poor health.
- a sickly child
- 1759, Tobias Smollett, letter dated 16 March, 1759, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London: Charles Dilly, 1791, Volume 1, p. 190,
- [...] the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majesty’s service.
- 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 14, in Pride and Prejudice, volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton […], OCLC 38659585, page 151:
- She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented her making that progress in many accomplishments which she could not otherwise have failed of;
- 1982, Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, New York: Ballantine, 2008, Chapter 1, p. 4,
- [...] the sharp-scented bottle of crystals that sickly Cousin Bertha had carried to ward off fainting spells.
- Not in good health; (somewhat) sick.
- 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act II, scene iv]:
- Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well,
For he went sickly forth:
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, 1 Corinthians 11:30:
- For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep [i.e. have died].
- 1782, Samuel Johnson, letter dated 20 March, 1782, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London: Charles Dilly, 1791, Volume 2, p. 419,
- The season was dreary, I was sickly, and found the friends sickly whom I went to see.
- 1850, Charlotte Brontë, letter dated 29 April, 1850, in Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, London: Smith, Elder, 1857, Chapter 6, p. 157,
- Papa continues far from well; he is often very sickly in the morning,
- 1958, Muriel Spark, Robinson, New York: New Directions, 2003, Chapter 9, p. 128,
- Miguel’s temperature was normal that day, though he was still sickly and restless.
-
- (of a plant) Characterized by poor or unhealthy growth.
- 1931, Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth, New York: Modern Library, 1944, Chapter 27, p. 236,
- [...] the good wheat on this land had turned sickly and yellow.
- 1962, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 6, p. 79,
- With the aid of the marigolds the roses flourished; in the control beds they were sickly and drooping.
- 1931, Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth, New York: Modern Library, 1944, Chapter 27, p. 236,
- Appearing ill, infirm or unhealthy; giving the appearance of illness.
- a sickly pallor
- 1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne and Son, and T. Cadell, Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 9, p. 121,
- [...] she exhibited a countenance so wretched, and a complection so sickly, that Cecilia was impressed with horror at the sight.
- 1791, Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, Volume 3, Chapter 12, p. 161-162,
- [...] he saw him arrive with his usual florid appearance: had he come pale and sickly, Sandford had been kind to him; but in apparent good health and spirits, he could not form his mouth to tell him he was “glad to see him.”
- 1961, Joseph Heller, Catch-22, New York: Dell, Chapter 39,
- Yossarian [...] could not wipe from his mind the excruciating image of the barefoot boy with sickly cheeks [...]
- Shedding a relatively small amount of light; (of light) not very bright.
- Synonyms: faint, pale, wan
- 1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, London: H. Herringman, 1667, Act II, p. 17,
- The Moon grows sickly at the sight of day.
- 1757, Thomas Gray, Odes, Dublin: G. Faulkner and J. Rudd, p. 5,
- Night, and all her sickly dews,
- Her Spectres wan, and Birds of boding cry,
- 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 5, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], OCLC 84390265:
- Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his warehouse till the sickly dawn strengthened into day.
- 1870–1871, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 32, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, OCLC 275036, page 235:
- [The match] lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame.
- 2006, Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, London: Virago, “1944,” section 2, p. 226,
- Duncan saw the men through a haze of wire and cigarette smoke and sickly, artificial light;
- Lacking intensity or vigour.
- Synonyms: faint, feeble, insipid, weak
- a sickly smile
- 1730, James Thomson, The Tragedy of Sophonisba, London: A. Millar, Act II, Scene 1, p. 19,
- What man of soul would [...] run,
- Day after day, the still-returning round
- Of life’s mean offices, and sickly joys;
- But in compassion to mankind?
- 1779, Hannah More, The Fatal Falsehood, London: T. Cadell, Act II, p. 27,
- [...] my credulous heart
- [...] fondly loves to cherish
- The feeble glimmering of a sickly hope.
- 1961, Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 19, in Stranger in a Strange Land, New York: Avon, OCLC 1036878670:
- He held a vast but carefully concealed distaste for all things American […] their manners, their bastard architecture and sickly arts … and their blind, pathetic, arrogant belief in their superiority long after their sun had set.
- Associated with poor moral or mental well-being.
- Synonym: unhealthy
- 1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], chapter 3, in The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […], OCLC 938500648; reprinted London: Elliot Stock, 1885, OCLC 21416084, page 27:
- The slightest distress, whether real or fictitious, touched him to the quick, and his soul laboured under a sickly sensibility of the miseries of others.
- 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, chapter 3, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, […], published 1792, OCLC 5625662194:
- These were not the ravings of imbecility, the sickly effusions of distempered brains;
- 1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter 2, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.; Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co., OCLC 34363729, page 33:
- Don’t squander the gold of your days [...] trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.
- 1964, Saul Bellow, Herzog, New York: Viking, p. 319,
- [...] I know how you came to despise all that sickly Wagnerian idiocy and bombast.
- 2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, part 4,
- That he had some sickly compulsion neurosis, they said, was very plain for all eyes to see.
- Tending to produce nausea.
- Synonyms: nauseating, sickening
- a sickly smell; sickly sentimentality
- 1865, Christina Rossetti, “Amor Mundi” in Goblin Market; The Prince’s Progress; and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, 1875, p. 286,
- ‘Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
- Their scent comes rich and sickly?’—‘A scaled and hooded worm.’
- 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 23, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], OCLC 458431182, pages 197-198:
- […] it warn’t no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things;
- 1895 May 7, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 4, in The Time Machine: An Invention, New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, OCLC 4701980, page 32:
- […] the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine [...] had absolutely upset my nerve.
- 1944, Katherine Anne Porter, “The Leaning Tower” in The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, New York: Harcourt, Brace, p. 173,
- He had scanty discouraged hair the color of tow, and a sickly, unpleasant breath.
- Overly sweet.
- Synonyms: cloying, saccharine
- 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 9, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, OCLC 844076792, page 123:
- […] he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate.
- 1929 November, Robert Graves, chapter XII, in Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape […], OCLC 5076208, page 132:
- After a meal of bread, bacon, rum and bitter stewed tea sickly with sugar, we went up through the broken trees to the east of the village and up a long trench to battalion headquarters.
- 1950, Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast, New York: Ballantine, 1968, Chapter 80, p. 562,
- The honey tasted sickly in his mouth.
- (obsolete) Marked by the occurrence of illness or disease (of a period of time).
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene iii]:
- This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
- a. 1768, Laurence Sterne, undated letter in Original Letters, London: Logographic Press, 1788, pp. 110-111,
- [...] if I thought the sentiments of your last letter were not the sentiments of a sickly moment—if I could be made to believe, for an instant, that they proceeded from you, in a sober, reflecting condition of your mind—I should give you over as incurable,
- 1798, Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, Chapter 7, p. 115,
- [...] the three years immediately following the last period [...] were years so sickly that the births were sunk to 10, 229, and the burials raised to 15, 068.
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- (obsolete) Tending to produce disease or poor health.
- Synonyms: insalubrious, unhealthy, unwholesome
- a sickly autumn; a sickly climate
- 1782, William Cowper, “The Progress of Error”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], OCLC 1029672464, page 54:
- Has some sickly eastern waste
Sent us a wind to parch us at a blast?
- 1867, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (translator), The Divine Comedy: Inferno, London: Routledge, Canto 20, lines 79-81, p. 64,
- Not far it [the water] runs before it finds a plain
- In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,
- And oft ’tis wont in summer to be sickly.
Derived terms
- sicklify
- sicklily
- sickliness
Translations
frequently ill
|
appearing ill
|
weak, faint
|
overly sweet
|
Verb
sickly (third-person singular simple present sicklies, present participle sicklying, simple past and past participle sicklied)
- (transitive, archaic, literary) To make (something) sickly.
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene i]:
- Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
- 1763, Charles Churchill, An Epistle to William Hogarth, London: for the author, p. 12,
- Thy Drudge contrives, and in our full career
- Sicklies our hopes with the pale hue of Fear;
- 1840, S. M. Heaton, Thoughts on the Litany, by a naval officer’s orphan daughter, edited by George Heaton, London: William Edward Painter, Section 4, p. 58,
- […] a cancer gnawing at the root of happiness, defeating every aim at permanent good in this world, and sicklying all sublunary joys […]
- 1862, Gail Hamilton, Country Living and Country Thinking, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, “Men and Women,” p. 109,
- He evidently thinks the sweet little innocents never heard or thought of such a thing before, and would go on burying their curly heads in books, and sicklying their rosy faces with “the pale cast of thought” till the end of time […]
- 2000, Ninian Smart, World Philosophies, New York: Routledge, Chapter 9, p. 207,
- Ockham was critical of so many of his fellows for sicklying over theology with the obscurities of philosophy.
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- (intransitive, rare) To become sickly.
- 1889, Samuel Cox, An Expositor’s Notebook, London: Richard D. Dickinson, 7th edition, Chapter 26, p. 364,
- But the seven most prominent Apostles […] still hang together, their hearts tormented with eager yet sad questionings, their hopes fast sicklying over with the pale hues of doubt.
- 1889, Samuel Cox, An Expositor’s Notebook, London: Richard D. Dickinson, 7th edition, Chapter 26, p. 364,
Adverb
sickly (comparative more sickly, superlative most sickly)
- In a sick manner; in a way that reflects or causes sickness.
- sickly pale; to cough sickly
- 1818, John Keats, Endymion, London: Taylor and Hessey, Book 2, lines 859-861, p. 93,
- […] he sickly guess’d
- How lone he was once more, and sadly press’d
- His empty arms together […]
- 1939, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Viking, 1962, Chapter , p. 364,
- The dazed man stared sickly at Casy.
- 1961, Bernard Malamud, A New Life, Penguin, 1968, Chapter , p. 185,
- For ten brutal minutes he was in torment, then the pain gradually eased. He felt sickly limp but relieved, thankful for his good health.
- 2010, Rowan Somerville, The End of Sleep New York: Norton, Chapter 9, p. 66,
- The creaseless horizontal face of the giant smiled sickly, leering.