ill
adjective
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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:
What’s the use of punishing a terminally ill man?
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2026
But although some patients, once medicated, could live rewarding and independent lives, funding for reliable community treatment never materialized, leaving many of the most seriously ill unsupported.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
A terminally ill mum who has been given three years to live has been denied disability benefit despite being unable to eat, talk, dress or use the toilet independently.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2026
Care for an ill person under 40 was particularly high — $4,700 more per year than the out-of-pocket average.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 28, 2026
Max didn’t want to be treated like a little kid or like he was ill.
From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Why is it so much more enjoyable on a sixth or eighth viewing than “Club Kid,” a movie I’ll probably never see again?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026
I’ll serve them over pasta and vegetables, chop them into Caesar wraps or turn them into absolutely gorgeous fried chicken sandwiches.
From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2026
"I keep waiting for something to sort of hit home. I guess one day I'll start declining but that doesn't keep me up at night."
From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026
If it’s someone I’ll see again, I give it a shot.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026
Often, I’ll leave the wagon, walking to make her trip lighter.
From "Will’s Race for Home" by Jewell Parker Rhodes
"There was a glint of fear. They were dour. This was something more than someone being ill. It was something that affected them."
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 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
"She was only 28. It wasn't like she was ill. She was here one day and gone the next, we didn't even get to say goodbye."
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2025
“I was genuinely surprised to see how many of you wrote letters to the judges, telling him I was mentally ill. Like my mother,” she said.
From Salon ● Oct. 27, 2024
“No, she’s not ill. She’s fine, we think,” Mrs. Billups was saying in her most professional-sounding teacher voice.
From "Out of My Mind" by Sharon M. Draper
Rivian produced 19,751 vehicles at its facility in Normal, Ill., and delivered 19,248 vehicles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 2026
When Sean Burke and Alyse Stanley bought their first home in Rockford, Ill., in October 2023, the average 30-year mortgage rate had just crossed 8%.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
Impossible Objects, an industrial-scale 3-D printing company operating in Northbrook, Ill., and Rochester, N.Y., secured $40 million in Series B funding led by Inflection Equity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 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
I was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Ill. U.S.A.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Pawlikowski has said that he keeps returning to the past in his films because addressing our modern ills directly would be too daunting.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2026
Warnings against job losses and other social ills have intensified lately.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 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
As Norway advance, is Wright correct about Scottish football's ills?
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
Without equality, eugenics would inevitably falter on the false premise that social ills, such as vagrancy, pauperism, deviance, alcoholism, and feeblemindedness were genetic ills—while, in fact, they merely reflected inequality.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
"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
The more she reflected upon what her possibilities had been and how she had misused them, the iller and the more distressed she got.
From Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 by Various
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
There was just a little milk that was reserved for the illest patients, no butter or bread.
From Field Hospital and Flying Column Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia by Violetta Thurstan
The company has a worse growth outlook and poorer historical performance, the analysts say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026
Raman, for better or worse, might be inclined to push-start the old jalopy, oil the gears and throw department heads overboard if they don’t deliver.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026
The carnage was worse in chip stocks and other beneficiaries of the AI spending spree, which already has been estimated at about $1 trillion a year.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2026
In people with IBD, researchers have previously associated lower concentrations of 5-oxoETE in intestinal tissue with worse disease outcomes.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2026
And the feeling was that much worse now that I knew Elliot Mason was sitting in the front row.
From "Glitch" by Laura Martin
The mayor, having spent her entire adult life in public service, had made the worst decision of her career by leaving town in January 2025 despite conditions that led to the incineration of Pacific Palisades.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026
Sentiment toward AI stocks has been unambiguously negative in recent weeks and the midterm results might suggest to some investors that the sector’s worst fears were realized.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026
She referred to Washington’s joint drills with allies and its naming of North Korea as the world’s worst human-trafficking nation as evidence of American hostility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2026
Last week's crash was one of the worst rail disasters in Europe's modern history, and Spain's worst crash since 2013.
From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2026
Anyway, you can see how Buddy got to be known as the worst boy in Sassafras Springs, even though no one ever caught him in the act, not once.
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
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