sickly
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsɪkli/
rhymes: -ɪkli
Forms: form: sicklier
form: sickliest
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. The verb is from the adjective.
Senses: examples: text: a sickly child
text: 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.
text: 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;
ref: 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, page 151:
text: [...] the sharp-scented bottle of crystals that sickly Cousin Bertha had carried to ward off fainting spells.
ref: 1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 1, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, New York: Ballantine, published 2008, page 4:
glosses: Frequently ill or in poor health; weakly.
examples: text: Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well,
For he went sickly forth:
ref: 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, [Act II, scene iv]:
text: For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep [i.e. have died].
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Corinthians 11:30:
text: 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.
text: 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,
text: Miguel’s temperature was normal that day, though he was still sickly and restless.
ref: 1958, Muriel Spark, chapter 9, in Robinson, New York: New Directions, published 2003, page 128:
glosses: Not in good health; (somewhat) sick.
examples: text: [...] the good wheat on this land had turned sickly and yellow.
ref: 1931, Pearl S. Buck, chapter 27, in The Good Earth, New York: Modern Library, published 1944, page 236:
text: With the aid of the marigolds the roses flourished; in the control beds they were sickly and drooping.
ref: 1962, Rachel Carson, chapter 6, in Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 79:
glosses: Characterized by poor or unhealthy growth. (of a plant)
examples: text: a sickly pallor
text: 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.
text: [...] 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.”
ref: 1791, Elizabeth Inchbald, chapter 12, in A Simple Story, volume 3, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, pages 161–162:
text: Yossarian [...] could not wipe from his mind the excruciating image of the barefoot boy with sickly cheeks [...]
ref: 1961, Joseph Heller, chapter 39, in Catch-22, New York: Dell:
glosses: Appearing ill, infirm or unhealthy; giving the appearance of illness.
examples: text: The Moon grows sickly at the sight of day.
ref: 1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, London: H. Herringman, published 1667, act II, page 17:
text: Night, and all her sickly dews,
Her Spectres wan, and Birds of boding cry,
ref: 1757, Thomas Gray, Odes, Dublin: G. Faulkner and J. Rudd, page 5:
text: Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his warehouse, till the sickly dawn strengthened into day.
ref: 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Hollow’s Cottage”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 85:
text: It [the match] lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame.
ref: 1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXII, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, page 235:
text: Duncan saw the men through a haze of wire and cigarette smoke and sickly, artificial light;
ref: 2006, Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, London: Virago, 1944, section 2, p. 226:
synonyms: faint
pale
wan
glosses: Shedding a relatively small amount of light; (of light) not very bright.
examples: text: a sickly smile
text: 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?
ref: 1730, James Thomson, The Tragedy of Sophonisba, London: A. Millar, act II, scene 1, page 19:
text: [...] my credulous heart
[...] fondly loves to cherish
The feeble glimmering of a sickly hope.
ref: 1779, Hannah More, The Fatal Falsehood, London: T. Cadell, act II, page 27:
text: 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.
ref: 1961, Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 19, in Stranger in a Strange Land, New York: Avon, →OCLC:
synonyms: faint
feeble
insipid
weak
glosses: Lacking intensity or vigour.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 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, page 27:
text: These were not the ravings of imbecility, the sickly effusions of distempered brains;
ref: 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “The Same Subject Continued [The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed]”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC, page 77:
text: 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.
ref: 1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter 2, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.; Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 33:
text: [...] I know how you came to despise all that sickly Wagnerian idiocy and bombast.
ref: 1964, Saul Bellow, Herzog, New York: Viking, page 319:
text: That he had some sickly compulsion neurosis, they said, was very plain for all eyes to see.
ref: 2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, part 4:
synonyms: unhealthy
glosses: Associated with poor moral or mental well-being.
examples: text: a sickly smell; sickly sentimentality
text: ‘Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly?’—‘A scaled and hooded worm.’
ref: 1865, Christina Rossetti, “Amor Mundi”, in Goblin Market; The Prince’s Progress; and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, published 1875, page 286:
text: […] it warn’t no perfumery neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things;
ref: 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, pages 197-198:
text: […] the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine [...] had absolutely upset my nerve.
ref: 1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 4, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 32:
text: He had scanty discouraged hair the color of tow, and a sickly, unpleasant breath.
ref: 1944, Katherine Anne Porter, “The Leaning Tower”, in The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, New York: Harcourt, Brace, page 173:
synonyms: nauseating
sickening
glosses: Tending to produce nausea.
examples: text: […] he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate.
ref: 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter IX, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 123:
text: 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.
ref: 1929 November, Robert Graves, chapter XII, in Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 132:
text: The honey tasted sickly in his mouth.
ref: 1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 80, in Gormenghast, New York: Ballantine, published 1968, page 562:
synonyms: cloying
saccharine
glosses: Overly sweet.
examples: text: This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
ref: 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, [Act III, scene iii]:
text: 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,
text: [...] 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.
ref: 1798, Thomas Malthus, chapter 7, in An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, page 115:
glosses: Marked by the occurrence of illness or disease (of a period of time).
examples: text: a sickly autumn; a sickly climate
text: Has some sickly eastern waste
Sent us a wind to parch us at a blast?
ref: 1782, William Cowper, “The Progress of Error”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 54:
text: 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.
ref: 1867, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, transl., The Divine Comedy: Inferno, London: Routledge, Canto 20, lines 79-81, p. 64:
synonyms: insalubrious
unhealthy
unwholesome
glosses: Tending to produce disease or poor health.
Derived terms: sicklify
sicklily
sickliness