SICKLY (sicklier, sickliest)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected forms: sicklier    , sickliest   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sickly mean? 

• SICKLY (adjective)
  The adjective SICKLY has 2 senses:

1. unhealthy looking

2. somewhat ill or prone to illness

  Familiarity information: SICKLY used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SICKLY (adjective)

Comparative: sicklier   
Superlative: sickliest   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Unhealthy looking

Synonyms:

sallow; sickly

Similar:

unhealthy (not in or exhibiting good health in body or mind)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Somewhat ill or prone to illness

Synonyms:

ailing; indisposed; peaked; poorly; seedy; sickly; under the weather; unwell

Context example:

is unwell and can't come to work

Similar:

ill; sick (affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function)

 Context examples 

I may go so far? said Uriah, with a sickly smile at his partner.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it very sickly except—Ah! my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

That she is old and sickly.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a notion she is always rather sickly.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

So he bolted his breakfast, a sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly as they, and heaved a sigh of relief when he passed out through the kitchen door.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Unless the elder brother is very sickly, I suppose you would not ask above fifty thousand pounds.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Here, its power was only a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

In a remote village, an aid worker pricks a sickly toddler's fingertip and, like most of the other village children's blood samples, this one turns a test strip yellow.

(Test for life-threatening nutrient deficit is made from bacteria entrails, National Science Foundation)

He was of a sickly colour, and his thin, sandy hair seemed to bristle up with the intensity of his emotion.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)