ill
adjective
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il l.
ill
1 American
[il]
/ ɪl /
adjective
worse,
worst,
iller,
illest
-
of unsound physical or mental health; unwell; sick.
She felt ill, so her teacher sent her to the nurse.
-
objectionable; unsatisfactory; poor; faulty.
ill manners.
-
ill feeling.
-
of ill repute.
- Synonyms:
- iniquitous, wrong
- Antonyms:
- good
-
ill fortune.
-
of inferior worth or ability; unskillful; inexpert.
an ill example of scholarship.
-
His mom is the illest cook.
noun
-
ills
plural
-
an unfavorable opinion or statement.
I can speak no ill of her.
-
harm or injury.
His remarks did much ill.
- Synonyms:
- misery, affliction, pain, hurt
-
trouble, distress, or misfortune.
Many ills befell him.
- Synonyms:
- calamity
-
evil.
to know the difference between good and ill.
- Synonyms:
- depravity
-
sickness or disease.
- Synonyms:
- affliction, illness
adverb
-
in an ill manner.
-
unsatisfactorily; poorly.
It ill befits a man to betray old friends.
-
in a hostile or unfriendly manner.
-
unfavorably; unfortunately.
-
with displeasure or offense.
-
faultily; improperly.
-
with difficulty or inconvenience; scarcely.
Buying a new car is an expense we can ill afford.
idioms
I'll
2
American
[ahyl]
/ aɪl /
ill.
3
American
abbreviation
-
illustrated.
-
illustration.
-
illustrator.
-
most illustrious.
Ill.
4
American
abbreviation
ill
1
British
/ ɪl /
adjective
-
(usually postpositive) not in good health; sick
-
characterized by or intending evil, harm, etc; hostile
ill deeds
-
causing or resulting in pain, harm, adversity, etc
ill effects
-
ascribing or imputing evil to something referred to
ill repute
-
promising an unfavourable outcome; unpropitious
an ill omen
-
harsh; lacking kindness
ill will
-
not up to an acceptable standard; faulty
ill manners
-
unable to relax; uncomfortable
noun
-
evil or harm
to wish a person ill
-
a mild disease
-
misfortune; trouble
adverb
-
badly
the title ill befits him
-
with difficulty; hardly
he can ill afford the money
-
not rightly
she ill deserves such good fortune
Ill.
2
British
abbreviation
I'll
3
British
/ aɪl /
contraction
ill
More Idioms
Grammar
See well 1.
Usage
What are other ways to say ill? The adjective ill is defined as “evil; wicked; bad.” However, it’s not used in exactly the same way as any of those synonyms! Learn the difference among these terms on Thesaurus.com.
Synonym Usage
Ill, sick mean being in bad health, not being well. Ill is the more formal word. In the U. S. the two words are used practically interchangeably except that sick is always used when the word modifies the following noun: He looks sick ( ill ); a sick person. In England, sick is not interchangeable with ill, but usually has the connotation of nauseous: She got sick and threw up. sick, however, is used before nouns just as in the U. S.: a sick man.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of ill1
1150–1200; Middle English ill ( e ) (noun and adj.) < Old Norse illr (adj.) ill, bad
Origin of ill.3
ill. ( def. 4 ) < Latin illustrissimus
Explanation
If you're ill, you're unwell, or sick. Being ill is a good excuse for missing work or school. You might get ill after being sneezed on by someone with a cold; or eating street food in a foreign country; or for no reason that you can point to. People can be mentally ill as well as physically ill, from depression or anxiety among other ailments. Ill can also mean "bad" in various ways, including when you suffer ill effects from going too long without sleep, or exercise ill judgment when you buy $500 worth of lottery tickets.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
There is no evidence that Xi is gravely ill or that he had a stroke or fainting spell, as rumored across social media this week.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
Palisades head coach Dylen Smith confirmed that “about 15 players or so” are ill, including one starting receiver and a few starting defensive backs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
The drug was generally well tolerated, and the critically ill patients in the trial lived longer than patients receiving standard treatments.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 17, 2026
But nothing about her suggests that she is terminally ill.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026
When her husband and daughter visit, she puts on a cheerful demeanor, even when she’s desperately ill.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
I’ll be reviewing the iPhone Duo later, closer to its Oct.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
So I’ll invite friends over, and we’ll end the week with a private sound bath.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
In the next free issue of my Let’s Analyze newsletter on Substack, I’ll reveal the company, explain why I’m buying more and share the price I’m targeting.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 18, 2026
Speaking to Katie Razzall on BBC Radio 4's PM programme, Eavis said: "No, it's definitely not Madonna, I'll tell you that."
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
Next summer I’ll be in Old Town Alexandria, seeing everything Jillian wants to share with me.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
"She then cancelled the wedding saying she was ill. But I was 50 that year so my partner and I still wanted to go to Turkey."
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
"He was critically ill. His heart stopped as soon as he arrived. We had to perform CPR," said lead author Ankit Bharat, a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern University.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 18, 2026
“I walked into the facility healthy and feeling fine, and within 24 hours I became severely ill. I had severe burning in my face, tremors, twitching; I felt like I was being electrocuted.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2025
"He's soldiered on for a while but now he's critically ill. We need to get his temperature and oxygen levels up fast."
From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2025
Only weeks after a previous entry declared her healthy, one of the doctors wrote, “The patient looks chronically ill. She is obviously in pain.”
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
The company expects eventually to increase annual production capacity at its plant in Normal, Ill., to 215,000 vehicles, adding potentially another 300,000 in capacity through its plant in Stanton Springs, Ga.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 17, 2026
The Vittitoes were paying more than $13,000 a year on their home in Washington, Ill., outside Peoria.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
According to Velasco, Ventura County was among only three of 12 local jurisdictions contacted — along with Cook County, Ill., and Harris Country, Texas — that said it was “evaluating” Mexico’s complaint.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
The Arkansas-based company said it is closing its Joslin, Ill. plant, which employs more than 2,000 people and can kill about 3,000 cattle a day, according to an internal company memo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
I was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Ill. U.S.A.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Warnings against job losses and other social ills have intensified lately.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
What drives societal ills or ignites a social movement?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
As Dan Kois illustrates in this ode to kicking back with friends, spending unstructured time together is a blessedly simple cure to the ills of modern life.
From Slate ● Jul. 10, 2026
In the video, Pratt stood outside Raman’s Silver Lake home and the city-owned Getty House in Hancock Park, where Bass lives, contending both are far removed from the urban ills that beset other Angelenos.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 21, 2026
In 1959 several British and French research teams found their independent studies pointing to a common conclusion — that some of humanity’s ills are caused by a disturbance of the normal chromosome number.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
"If you have a generally iller population, that's not good for the residents, it's not good for productivity, it's not good for the economy.'"
From BBC ● May 25, 2023
This gave him an unnatural appearance and made him look iller than ever.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 30, 2019
He got iller and iller and iller, and of course he died in the beginning of 2015 when some of the other things had started appearing in the press.
From BBC ● Nov. 23, 2016
Last year began with my being ill, kept on with my being iller, then I was unwell, followed by being poorly with a tiny interlude of infirmity.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 15, 2012
This, in turn, was the very thing to keep him but ill at ease with himself, and iller at ease, if not at downright loggerheads, with everybody else.
From The Red Moccasins A Story by Morrison Heady
The Black neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills Estates, Ladera Heights and View Park all sit hillside with some of the illest views in the city.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026
His wife was told she should prepare for the worst, with staff describing her husband as "one of the illest people they'd ever seen".
From BBC ● May 21, 2024
Rapper Travis Scott told his nearly 12 million followers on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that Monday “might be one for the illest days in women’s sports historyyyyyyy.”
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 2, 2024
It’s one of the illest, if not the illest Caribbean food spots in the city.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 22, 2022
Not knowing is worse than the very illest news.
From Grey Town An Australian Story by Gerald Baldwin
Censorship, and worse, are the surest way to elevate an artist and their work.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026
Both are still worse than bottom club Coventry, who are pointless and goalless, but have an xG of 4.21.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
Over 90% of Chinese steel mills are estimated to be unprofitable, with market conditions appearing worse than the steel-market downturns of 2008, 2015 and 2018, he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
Nearly three decades in, “South Park” still knows that if you want to understand what Americans think they are becoming, you could do worse than look at what they’re ordering.
From Salon ● Sep. 18, 2026
To make things worse, Old Rowdy growled way down deep, and started walking around stiff-legged, like when he was getting ready for a fight.
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
The record of the 2005 San Diego Padres, the worst squad ever to qualify for the MLB playoffs in an uninterrupted season—a dubious distinction that could fall this year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
Villa have had the lowest number of shots in the Premier League with 33, compared to Tottenham's 51, while their six on target is also the worst in the top flight followed by Spurs' 12.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
For the Dodgers, the worst tickets seldom fall to market rate, because the team would rather live with a few empty seats rather than condition fans to hold out for a lower price.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026
The fact that the two worst crashes in stock-market history occurred in October is almost certainly nothing more than a coincidence.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 18, 2026
Staying there in Maidin Bay wasn’t going to be the worst thing.
From "Nory Ryan’s Song" by Patricia Reilly Giff
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
