sickness
Americannoun
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sicknesses
plural
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a particular disease or malady.
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the state or an instance of being sick; illness.
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nausea; queasiness.
noun
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an illness or disease
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nausea or queasiness
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the state or an instance of being sick
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sickness
before 1000; Middle English siknesse, seknesse, Old English sēocnesse. See sick 1, -ness
Compare meaning
How does sickness compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
The condition of being unwell or having an illness is sickness. Your sickness during the month of November might mean you miss a lot of school. A well-known, Christian version of wedding vows includes a promise to "have and to hold...in sickness and in health." This means the couple agrees to stay together and support each other whether they're healthy or ill. Some sickness is a chronic or permanent kind of malady, while others are more specific, like morning sickness during pregnancy or a brief flash of sickness when your plane hits a patch of turbulence.
Vocabulary lists containing sickness
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:
Severe morning sickness forced her to leave school and cost her a job.
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
Disability and sickness payments in the U.K. show how the system sprawls.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
There is a very real fear about trying to catch things before they happen, and often, these products are trying to market a cure for a sickness that hasn’t even happened yet.
From Slate ● Oct. 8, 2026
It took the company more than six weeks to clear the site, during which residents complained about a surge of rats, flies and sickness.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
“How? You said the sickness is in his blood. That he can’t be saved.”
From "The Last Last-Day-of-Summer" by Lamar Giles
"There are sicknesses and we can not find any cure," said 54-year-old Abu Khalil, who has been displaced to Rafah in southern Gaza.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2024
Charles N. Hunter, who later wrote a critical report accusing General Stilwell of sending men still recovering from jungle sicknesses back into combat, which drew a Congressional investigation.
From New York Times ● Jan. 12, 2024
Nearly 30,000 people staying in schools, auditoriums and other evacuation centers worried about infections as cases of COVID-19 and other sicknesses popped up.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 7, 2024
Breathing brings these particles deep into the lungs, where they can cause many different sicknesses, from coughs, headaches, and sore throats to asthma, lung problems, and even cancer.
From NewsForKids.net ● Nov. 7, 2023
In the past there had been sicknesses that spread from one cott to the next, with many deaths.
From "Gathering Blue" by Lois Lowry
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
