sick

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English

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Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English sik, sike, seek, seke, seok, from Old English sēoc (“sick, ill”), from Proto-West Germanic *seuk, from Proto-Germanic *seukaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sewg- (“to be troubled or grieved”).

See also West Frisian siik, Dutch ziek, German siech, Norwegian Bokmål syk, Norwegian Nynorsk sjuk, Danish syg; also Middle Irish socht (“silence, depression”), Old Armenian հիւծանիմ (hiwcanim, “I am weakening”).

Adjective

sick (comparative sicker, superlative sickest)

  1. (less common in the UK) In poor health; ill.
    • a1420, The British Museum Additional MS, 12,056, “Wounds complicated by the Dislocation of a Bone”, in Robert von Fleischhacker, editor, Lanfranc’s “Science of cirurgie.”‎, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, translation of original by Lanfranc of Milan, published 1894, →ISBN, page 63:
      Ne take noon hede to brynge togidere þe parties of þe boon þat is to-broken or dislocate, til viij. daies ben goon in þe wyntir, & v. in þe somer; for þanne it schal make quytture, and be sikir from swellynge; & þanne brynge togidere þe brynkis eiþer þe disiuncture after þe techynge þat schal be seid in þe chapitle of algebra.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
      ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’
    She was sick all day with the flu.
    We have to care for the sick.
    Synonyms: ill, not well, poorly, sickly, unwell
    Antonyms: fit, healthy, well
  2. Having an urge to vomit.
    My daughter was violently sick three times in the night.
    Synonym: nauseated
    • 1913, The Texas criminal reports, page 8:
      In the meantime the old man had gotten up and gone out in the yard and began to vomit. Henry said I believe I feel sick and got up and went out. He went out one door and his father went out the other one. I did not think there was anything wrong with the coffee and I asked my wife to pour this out […]
    • 1918, Cecil Day Lewis, The Whispering Roots, Jonathan Cape, page 140:
      Q. Didn't he complain he was sick before he commenced to vomit?
      A. He did, just before he said, to me, “I feel sick,” I asked him if he wanted to throw up and he said yes.
    • 1958, Gene D’Olive, Chiara, Signet Book:
      […] trying hard to cry. Crying’s good. Crying teaches him to breathe. But I wish he weren’t crying from hunger. I feel dizzy. I sit down and feel a little sick. Maybe I’ll vomit, too. No, I never vomit. I feel sick, but I won’t vomit. I never vomit.
    • 2013, Cheryl Rainfield, Stained, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 38:
      I feel sick, like I might vomit, and I'm more tired than I can ever remember feeling.
  3. (colloquial) Mentally unstable, disturbed.
    Synonyms: disturbed, twisted, warped
  4. (colloquial) In bad taste.
    That’s a sick joke.
  5. Tired of or annoyed by something.
    I’ve heard that song on the radio so many times that I’m starting to get sick of it.
  6. (slang) Very good, excellent, awesome, badass.
    This tune is sick.
    Dude, this car's got a sick subwoofer!
    Synonyms: rad, wicked
    Antonyms: crap, naff, uncool
  7. In poor condition.
    sick building syndrome; my car is looking pretty sick; my job prospects are pretty sick
  8. (agriculture) Failing to sustain adequate harvests of crop, usually specified.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Descendants
  • →? Navajo: sxih
Translations
ill — see ill

Noun

sick (uncountable)

  1. (British, Australia, colloquial) Vomit.
    • 2003, Lynsey Calderwood, Cracked: Recovering After Traumatic Brain Injury, page 132:
      […] they're spitting and belching chunks of lentilly gunk. Looks like sick.
    • 2010, Michael Jayfox, E. Chas McSween, Intravenus DeMilo, Enron Hubbard, Hunter McKenzie-Smythe, Flash Johnson, Things Bogans Like, Sydney: Hachette, page 80:
      The bogan, true to form, laps it up like a dog does its own sick.
  2. (British, colloquial) (especially in the phrases on the sick and on long-term sick) Any of various current or former benefits or allowances paid by the Government to support the sick, disabled or incapacitated.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

sick (third-person singular simple present sicks, present participle sicking, simple past and past participle sicked)

  1. (British, Australia, colloquial) To vomit.
    I woke up at 4 am and sicked on the floor.
  2. (obsolete except in dialect, intransitive) To fall sick; to sicken.
    • c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, ”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
      Our great-grandsire, Edward, sick'd and died.
    • 2005, Damian Marley, “Welcome to Jamrock”, in Welcome to Jamrock(album)‎:
      Old man to pickney, so wave unno hand if you with me /To see the sufferation sick me.
Derived terms

Etymology 2

Variant of sic, itself an alteration of seek.

Verb

sick (third-person singular simple present sicks, present participle sicking, simple past and past participle sicked)

  1. (rare) Alternative spelling of sic (“set upon”)
    • 1920, James Oliver Curwood, Back to God's Country:
      "Wapi," she almost screamed, "go back! Sick 'em, Wapi—sick 'em—sick 'em—sick 'em!"
    • 1938, Johannes Buchholtz, translated by Eugene Gay-Tifft, The Saga of Frank Dover, Kessinger Publishing edition, published 2005, →ISBN, page 125:
      When we were at work swabbing the deck, necessarily barelegged, Pelle would sick the dog on us; and it was an endless source of pleasure to him when the dog succeeded in fastening its teeth in our legs and making the blood run down our ankles.
    • 1957, J. D. Salinger, "Zooey", in, 1961, Franny and Zooey, 1991 LB Books edition, page 154,
      "...is just something God sicks on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world."
    • 2001 (publication date), Anna Heilman, Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles of Anna Heilman, University of Calgary Press, →ISBN, page 82,
      Now they find a new entertainment: they sick the dog on us.

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