| / English Dictionary |
SICKLY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
Irregular inflected forms: sicklier , sickliest
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Unhealthy looking
Synonyms:
sallow; sickly
Classified under:
Similar:
unhealthy (not in or exhibiting good health in body or mind)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Somewhat ill or prone to illness
Example:
is unwell and can't come to work
Synonyms:
ailing; indisposed; peaked; poorly; seedy; sickly; under the weather; unwell
Classified under:
Similar:
ill; sick (affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function)
Context examples:
I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
At the bottom there was a dark, tunnel-like passage, through which came a deathly, sickly odour, the odour of old earth newly turned.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I could see their faces, flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
See to the skin tint: it is not to be replaced, for paint as you will, it is not once in a hundred times that it is not either burned too brown in the furnace or else the color will not hold, and you get but a sickly white.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“She looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will make him a very proper wife.”
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
“My Agnes!” he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Perry does not call it altogether a sickly season.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He saw the weak and sickly faces of the girls of the factories, and the simpering, boisterous girls from the south of Market.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, for you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was such, as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
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