ill
adjective
Showing results for ill.
Search instead for
illest.
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:
It takes time for parents to understand the level of concern I have, even when their child is physically ill in the hospital requiring ongoing care.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
In 2020, he announced that he had been severely ill as a result of lithium poisoning: a treatment aimed at stabilising his moods.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
This bodes ill for the Moroun family, the billionaire owners of the Ambassador Bridge since 1979, who have long sought to block the new bridge’s construction.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
"I felt very ill because I have asthma. I started coughing and I threw up," she told AFP at a gymnasium in the northern Madrid suburb of Alcobendas.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
I felt like something ill was festering in my stomach, and my head felt like a piñata stuffed with cotton balls.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
“I was a No. 10, what excites me is scoring goals…I was a leader on the pitch, and I’ll be a leader through what I’ve achieved.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
"My family and I are never going to heal from this trauma. I'll never be myself again and that's because of Robert Bush."
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Starting Aug. 4, I’ll be in your inbox every Tuesday as I officially take the reins as Don’t Short Yourself’s regular writer.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
“This was an unfortunate experience, but I’ll absolutely be flying again.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
“No. I’ve just been busy with other stuff. I’ll be back at practice soon.”
From "Red Flags and Butterflies" by Sheryl Azzam
"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 said: "It was a shock because my father was always a big, strong man, so he was never ill. He never used to take time off sick from work."
From BBC ● Dec. 15, 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
“We have so appreciated all of the prayers and support from friends who knew he was very ill. Although it is hard for us to say goodbye, his peaceful passing was a blessing for him.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2024
“Beowulf is also ill. He claims to have a headache in his leg.”
From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood
I was en route to the airport in Moline, Ill., nearly three decades ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
Calamos Investments is based in Naperville, Ill., and manages about $52 billion in assets through various strategies.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 27, 2026
Ben Zwief, an adviser in Lake Forest, Ill., cites the example of a client with $50,000 in credit-card debt at a 20% interest rate.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 2, 2026
A recreation director from Berwyn, Ill., the aforementioned Ray Clay, succeeded Mr. Edwards starting with the 1990-91 championship season.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026
I was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Ill. U.S.A.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
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
An experience completely ignorant to the ills of modern football, to politics, ticket prices or hydration breaks.
From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026
The Swiss are largely well-governed, and the country’s appeal is understandable to people who want to escape the tax rates and other ills that are common elsewhere in Europe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2026
The vice president of the Durham Merchants Association complained, with some justification, that the business community was being blamed for all of Durham’s ills.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
"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
Still, in his older, iller years, he's become kinder, even to himself, and though he wished he'd done some stuff better, he could live with it.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 23, 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
Blaze is just one of the illest low heads.
From Salon ● Mar. 6, 2021
A lingring death maye auaile my soule, but it is the illest of ills that can befortune my bodie.
From The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse by Gosse, Edmund
The Times quoted an unnamed "senior football figure" calling the plan "potentially much worse than the European Super League", as it would have an impact on all levels of football across the globe.
From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026
“It couldn’t come at a worse time, as a lot of producers will be selling their calves over the next few months.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
"You had the algae bloom of 2023, '24 and '25, and I would say last year was worse than any."
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
When his children complain about a newspaper article, he reminds them that he endured worse at their age, when he was fighting bruising corporate battles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
But the pain in my side is getting worse.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the leader of Madrid’s local government, earlier this week described the Madrid wildfires as perhaps “the worst natural catastrophe in Spain’s history.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
"People say your 20s are the best years of your life and these are the worst years of my life, by far."
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
As French firefighters struggle to contain the worst wildfires in living memory with just 12 aerial water bombers, production of the iconic aircraft creaks along half a world away in a Canadian factory.
From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026
Bonds in 2022 suffered their worst bear market since 1793, according to the database maintained by Edward McQuarrie, an emeritus professor at Santa Clara University.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
The screaming children were an irritation at best, a nuisance at worst.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
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.
