sicken
Americanverb
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to make or become sick, nauseated, or disgusted
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to show symptoms (of an illness)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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sickensimple
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sickenssimple
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have sickenedperfect
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has sickenedperfect
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am sickeningprogressive
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are sickeningprogressive
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is sickeningprogressive
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have been sickeningperfect progressive
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has been sickeningperfect progressive
Past
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sickenedsimple
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had sickenedperfect
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was sickeningprogressive
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were sickeningprogressive
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had been sickeningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sicken
1150–1200; Middle English seknen, sicnen; cognate with Old Norse sjūkna. See sick 1, -en 1
Explanation
Things that sicken you make you feel upset or ill. It might sicken you to realize that you've hit a squirrel with your car. When things sicken you, they either make you feel terrible — disgusted or horrified — or they make you physically sick. Eating a piece of moldy bread or some potato salad that's been sitting in the sun too long will probably sicken you. Reading a story about childhood hunger and poverty in the newspaper can also sicken you. The earliest meaning of sicken was "fall ill," from an Old English root, seoc, "ill, diseased, weak, or troubled."
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:
The problem with this line is that unvaccinated children can sicken infants and immuno-compromised children who can’t be inoculated, leaving some disabled or worse.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026
Microplastics, along with ultra-tiny nanoplastics, can kill or severely sicken marine life before entering the food web and ultimately ending up on our plates.
From Barron's ● Jan. 22, 2026
Scotland driving at Greece's heart in a bid to sicken them again after sickening them at Hampden earlier in the group.
From BBC ● Nov. 15, 2025
This helps explain how an ingredient called tara flour was able to sicken hundreds of people who consumed French Lentil + Leek Crumbles, a meat replacement product sold by Daily Harvest in 2022.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2024
Yet Leeuwenhoek never had the faintest suspicion that some of his "animalcules" caused humans to sicken and to die.
From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman
I'm a massive fan of Unai Emery but the Ollie Watkins thing sickens you a bit, he was really let down by his striker last week.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
But the disease would once again become endemic, meaning ever-present at some baseline level, like influenza, which sickens millions and kills thousands in the U.S. every year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2025
“Gossip is an evil that destroys social life, sickens people’s hearts and leads to nothing,” the 88-year-old pontiff admonished.
From Salon ● Dec. 21, 2024
Influenza, or flu, sickens millions of people across the globe each year and can lead to severe illness and death.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 1, 2024
The smell clings to my nostrils and sickens my belly.
From "Without Refuge" by Jane Mitchell
The blazes in Indonesia have burned through hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest and plantations, sickened local residents and sent thick haze across the region.
From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2026
Person-to-person spread of pneumonic plague hasn’t been documented in the U.S. since 1924, according to the CDC, but there have been rare cases among people exposed to cats that were sickened by eating infected rodents.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
She felt betrayed, and sickened, but did not immediately end the relationship.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
Nearly 13,000 people across 21 states had been sickened, 570 hospitalized and two had died after an outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms.
From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026
As the months went by I remained uninterested, if not downright sickened, by my study of biology; my grades were poor; I was held in contempt by teacher and classmate alike.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
Indonesian schoolchildren prayed for rain on Thursday as another firefighter lost his life battling drought-fuelled blazes consuming forests and peatlands and blanketing parts of Southeast Asia in a sickening haze.
From Barron's ● Oct. 22, 2026
The cyclospora outbreak has become the nation’s largest of its kind, sickening thousands of people.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a frequent critic of the food industry, which he has blamed for sickening Americans with ultraprocessed foods and chemicals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
And I would be living within walking distance of a sickening number of farmers markets.
From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2026
As I remembered that I did, in fact, think of doing that, I had a really sickening thought.
From "Z for Zachariah" by Robert C. O’Brien
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