Word Study
Sickly
CIDE DICTIONARY
Sickly, a.
- Somewhat sick; disposed to illness; attended with disease; as, a sickly body. [1913 Webster]"This physic but prolongs thy sickly days." [1913 Webster]
- Producing, or tending to, disease; as, a sickly autumn; a sickly climate. Cowper. [1913 Webster]
- Appearing as if sick; weak; languid; pale. [1913 Webster]"The moon grows sickly at the sight of day." [1913 Webster]"Nor torrid summer's sickly smile." [1913 Webster]
- Tending to produce nausea; sickening; as, a sickly smell; sickly sentimentality. [1913 Webster]
Syn. -- Diseased; ailing; infirm; weakly; unhealthy; healthless; weak; feeble; languid; faint.
Sickly, adv.
In a sick manner or condition; ill. [1913 Webster]
"My people sickly [with ill will] beareth our marriage." [1913 Webster]
Sickly, v. t.
To make sick or sickly; -- with over, and probably only in the past participle. [1913 Webster]
"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." [1913 Webster]
"Sentiments sicklied over . . . with that cloying heaviness into which unvaried sweetness is too apt to subside." [1913 Webster]
OXFORD DICTIONARY
Sickly, adj. (sicklier, sickliest)
1 a of weak health; apt to be ill. b (of a person's complexion, look, etc.) languid, faint, or pale, suggesting sickness (a sickly smile). c (of light or colour) faint, pale, feeble.
2 causing ill health (a sickly climate).
3 (of a book etc.) sentimental or mawkish.
4 inducing or connected with nausea (a sickly taste).
5 (of a colour etc.) of an unpleasant shade inducing nausea (a sickly green).
1 a of weak health; apt to be ill. b (of a person's complexion, look, etc.) languid, faint, or pale, suggesting sickness (a sickly smile). c (of light or colour) faint, pale, feeble.
2 causing ill health (a sickly climate).
3 (of a book etc.) sentimental or mawkish.
4 inducing or connected with nausea (a sickly taste).
5 (of a colour etc.) of an unpleasant shade inducing nausea (a sickly green).
Derivative
sickliness n.
Etymology
ME, prob. after ON sjukligr (as SICK(1))
THESAURUS
Sickly
achromatic, achromic, ailing, anemic, ashen, ashy, bled white, bloodless, cachectic, cadaverous, chloranemic, cloying, colorless, cranky, dead, deadly pale, deathly pale, debilitated, delicate, dim, dimmed, dingy, discolored, diseased, donsie, down, drained, drawn, dull, enervated, etiolated, exhausted, exsanguinated, exsanguine, exsanguineous, faded, failing, faint, fallow, feeble, flat, frail, ghastly, gray, haggard, healthless, hueless, hypochromic, in poor health, indisposed, infirm, insalubrious, insipid, invalid, lackluster, languishing, leaden, livid, low, lurid, lusterless, mat, maudlin, mawkish, mealy, mean, moribund, morose, muddy, mushy, neutral, noisome, noxious, off-color, offish, pale, pale as death, pale-faced, pallid, pasty, peaked, peaking, peaky, pimping, poorly, puny, reduced, reduced in health, run-down, sallow, sick, sickish, tallow-faced, toneless, uncolored, unhealthful, unhealthy, unsound, valetudinarian, valetudinary, wan, washed-out, watery, waxen, weak, weakened, weakly, whey-faced, white, with low resistanceROGET THESAURUS
Sickly
Disease
N disease, illness, sickness, ailing, all the ills that flesh is heir to, morbidity, morbosity, infirmity, ailment, indisposition, complaint, disorder, malady, distemper, distemperature, visitation, attack, seizure, stroke, fit, delicacy, loss of health, invalidation, cachexy, cachexia, atrophy, marasmus, indigestion, dyspepsia, decay, decline, consumption, palsy, paralysis, prostration, taint, pollution, infection, sepsis, septicity, infestation, epidemic, pandemic, endemic, epizootic, murrain, plague, pestilence, pox, sore, ulcer, abscess, fester, boil, pimple, wen, carbuncle, gathering, imposthume, peccant humor, issue, rot, canker, cold sore, fever sore, cancer, carcinoma, leukemia, neoplastic disease, malignancy, tumor, caries, mortification, corruption, gangrene, sphacelus, sphacelation, leprosy, eruption, rash, breaking out, fever, temperature, calenture, inflammation, ague, angina pectoris, appendicitis, Asiatic cholera, spasmodic cholera, biliary calculus, kidney stone, black death, bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, blennorrhagia, blennorrhoea, blood poisoning, bloodstroke, bloody flux, brash, breakbone fever, dengue fever, malarial fever, Q-fever, heart attack, cardiac arrest, cardiomyopathy, hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, bronchocele, canker rash, cardialgia, carditis, endocarditis, cholera, asphyxia, chlorosis, chorea, cynanche, dartre, enanthem, enanthema, erysipelas, exanthem, exanthema, gallstone, goiter, gonorrhea, green sickness, grip, grippe, influenza, flu, hay fever, heartburn, heaves, rupture, hernia, hemorrhoids, piles, herpes, itch, king's evil, lockjaw, measles, mumps, polio, necrosis, pertussis, phthisis, pneumonia, psora, pyaemia, pyrosis, quinsy, rachitis, ringworm, rubeola, St. Vitus's dance, scabies, scarlatina, scarlet fever, scrofula, seasickness, struma, syntexis, tetanus, tetter, tonsillitis, tonsilitis, tracheocele, trachoma, trismus, varicella, varicosis, variola, water qualm, whooping cough, yellow fever, yellow jack, fatal disease, dangerous illness, galloping consumption, churchyard cough, general breaking up, break up of the system, idiocy insanity, martyr to disease, cripple, the halt the lame and the blind, valetudinary, valetudinarian, invalid, patient, case, sickroom, sick- chamber, pathology, etiology, nosology, anthrax, bighead, blackleg, blackquarter, cattle plague, glanders, mange, scrapie, milk sickness, heartworm, feline leukemia, roundworms, quarter-evil, quarter-ill, rinderpest, virus, bacterium, bacteria, DNA virus, RNA virus, rhinovirus, rhabdovirus, picornavirus, herpesvirus, cytomegalovirus, CMV, human immunodefficiency virus, HIV, diseased, ailing, ill, ill of, taken ill, seized with, indisposed, unwell, sick, squeamish, poorly, seedy, affected with illness, afflicted with illness, laid up, confined, bedridden, invalided, in hospital, on the sick list, out of health, out of sorts, under the weather, valetudinary, unsound, unhealthy, sickly, morbid, morbose, healthless, infirm, chlorotic, unbraced, drooping, flagging, lame, crippled, halting, morbid, tainted, vitiated, peccant, contaminated, poisoned, tabid, mangy, leprous, cankered, rotten, rotten to the core, rotten at the core, withered, palsied, paralytic, dyspeptic, luetic, pneumonic, pulmonic, phthisic, rachitic, syntectic, syntectical, tabetic, varicose, touched in the wind, broken-winded, spavined, gasping, hors de combat, weakly, weakened, decrepit, decayed, incurable, in declining health, cranky, in a bad way, in danger, prostrate, moribund, morbific epidemic, endemic, zymotic.Weakness
N weakness, debility, atony, relaxation, languor, enervation, impotence, infirmity, effeminacy, feminality, fragility, flaccidity, inactivity, anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood, declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength, delicacy, invalidation, decrepitude, asthenia, adynamy, cachexy, cachexia, sprain, strain, reed, thread, rope of sand, house of cards, softling, weakling, infant, youth, weak, feeble, debile, impotent, relaxed, unnerved sapless, strengthless, powerless, weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic, asthenic, nervous, soft, effeminate, feminate, womanly, frail, fragile, shattery, flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread, rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky, craichy, drooping, tottering, broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky, palsied, decrepit, languid, poor, infirm, faint, faintish, sickly, dull, slack, evanid, spent, short-winded, effete, weather-beaten, decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, laid low, pulled down, the worse for wear, unstrengthened, unsupported, unaided, unassisted, aidless, defenseless, cantilevered (support), on its last legs, weak as a child, weak as a baby, weak as a chicken, weak as a cat, weak as a rat, weak as water, weak as water gruel, weak as gingerbread, weak as milk and water, colorless, non sum qualis eram.For further exploring for "Sickly" in Webster Dictionary Online