sickly
Americanadjective
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not strong; unhealthy; ailing.
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of, connected with, or arising from ill health.
a sickly complexion.
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marked by the prevalence of ill health, as a region.
the epidemic left the town sickly.
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causing sickness.
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maudlin and insipid; mawkish.
sickly sentimentality.
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faint or feeble, as light or color.
adverb
verb (used with object)
adjective
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disposed to frequent ailments; not healthy; weak
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of, relating to, or caused by sickness
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(of a smell, taste, etc) causing revulsion or nausea
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(of light or colour) faint or feeble
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mawkish; insipid
sickly affectation
adverb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of sickly
1300–50; Middle English siklich, sekly (adj.). See sick 1, -ly
Explanation
If you're frequently ill, or often under the weather, you're sickly. A sickly child tends to miss a lot of school. Sickly people aren't in perfect health — they are prone to coming down with illnesses, or they just generally don't feel well. You can also describe someone as appearing sickly, if their faces are pale and unhealthy-looking. This "habitually ailing" meaning dates from the fourteenth century, and for a brief time it was also used to mean "causing illness."
Vocabulary lists containing sickly
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 movie’s title and setting—an endless expanse of deserted, largely furniture-free office space bathed in sickly yellow—come from a crowd-sourced urban legend or “creepypasta” that spread online before the pandemic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
Smith was a sickly child, contracting bronchial pneumonia, tuberculosis, German measles, mumps and chicken pox which kept her in "periods of lengthy bed rest".
From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2025
While the series is very much up for grabs, Tuesday’s loss makes one thing very sickly certain.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2025
Even before ICE got him, he had been sickly.
From Slate ● Oct. 27, 2025
He didn’t tell other kids, because they wouldn’t get it; he was too small, too sickly to climb mountains.
From "The Honest Truth" by Dan Gemeinhart
He’s big, menacing and worthy to own, but I would have preferred his older, sicklier version in which he acted as a caretaker for Professor X in the film “Logan.”
From Washington Times ● May 29, 2019
The Greek lamp of Monarchism, which has been burning with an ever sicklier flame, went out.
From Time Magazine Archive
His eye seemed both wilder and sicklier, and for the first time I saw him with none of the appurtenances of his trade.
From The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies by Buchan, John
Its dark-green hue, its sicklier tints all fail, And rip'ening harvest rustles in the gale.
From The Farmer's Boy A Rural Poem by Bloomfield, Robert
The latter, as the significance of the question came home to him, went even a sicklier white, like the belly of a dead fish.
From The Untamed by Brand, Max
It’s a family joke that they have the sickliest pets in history.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 15, 2021
A bunged-up court system made foreclosure all but impossible, so owners of even the sickliest of companies could spend lavishly without fear of repercussions.
From Economist ● Apr. 19, 2018
This is also a bank that marketed complex derivatives to Europe’s sickliest bank, Monte dei Paschi in Italy.
From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2016
Healthiest section of the U. S. from the typhoid aspect is New England; sickliest, the east south-central region.
From Time Magazine Archive
"You ain't gettin' jealous, are you?" says I. Purdy unreefs the sickliest kind of a grin you ever saw.
From Side-stepping with Shorty by Ford, Sewell
The town -- the greater Bay Area, for that matter -- is sicklied o'er with restaurants.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the middle of a second act seance various ectoplasmic entities wander about the darkness sicklied o'er with the pale cast of greenish spotlights.
From Time Magazine Archive
They are Reds who have been, if not sicklied o'er, at least noticeably bleached, if not by the pale cast of thought, then by the bright sun of circumstance.
From Time Magazine Archive
Oh, nothing, I'm just a little sicklied o'er ...
From Time Magazine Archive
The Hamlet in us all must be put down and resolution must not be allowed to be sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.
From Psychotherapy by Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
He imagined the first beginnings of suspicion; he saw it filming the eyes of his acquaintances, then of his friends, and at last sicklying over the face even of his brother Silas.
From Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment 1898 by Bellamy, Edward
No sicklying taint of sorrow overlies the lucid lake of liquid love, upon which, hand in hand, Aline and I are to float into eternity!
From The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan by Gilbert, W. S. (William Schwenck), Sir
And therefore West, after an hour of delightful tête-à-tête in the charming little back parlor, stiffened himself up, his brow sicklying o'er with the pale cast of disagreeable thought, and began to make it.
From Queed by Crosby, Raymond Moreau
They believe that on public occasions the chuprassies have sometimes the power of sicklying them o'er with the pale cast of neglect.
From Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series by Aberigh-Mackay, George Robert
Growing quite staid in manner, the weight of India adding gravity to his looks, sicklying his young face o'er with pale cast of thought.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 by Various
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.
