Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use sickly in a sentence

28 example sentences · adjective, verb, adverb

Sickly means frequently ill or in poor health; weakly. Example: “He fixed me with a sickly grin, and said, "I told you it wouldn't work!"”

Examples of sickly by meaning

adjectiveFrequently ill or in poor health; weakly.

  • a sickly child

adjectiveNot in good health; (somewhat) sick.

  • Miguel’s temperature was normal that day, though he was still sickly and restless.1958, Muriel Spark, chapter 9, in Robinson, New York: New Directions, published 2003, page 128

adjectiveCharacterized by poor or unhealthy growth. (of a plant).

  • With the aid of the marigolds the roses flourished; in the control beds they were sickly and drooping.1962, Rachel Carson, chapter 6, in Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 79

adjectiveAppearing ill, infirm or unhealthy; giving the appearance of illness.

  • a sickly pallor

adjectiveShedding a relatively small amount of light; (of light) not very bright.

  • Duncan saw the men through a haze of wire and cigarette smoke and sickly, artificial light;2006, Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, London: Virago, 1944, section 2, p. 226

adjectiveLacking intensity or vigour.

  • a sickly smile
  • a sickly winter sun

adjectiveAssociated with poor moral or mental well-being.

  • That he had some sickly compulsion neurosis, they said, was very plain for all eyes to see.2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, part 4

adjectiveTending to produce nausea.

  • a sickly smell; sickly sentimentality
  • He had scanty discouraged hair the color of tow, and a sickly, unpleasant breath.1944, Katherine Anne Porter, “The Leaning Tower”, in The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, New York: Harcourt, Brace, page 173

More sentences with sickly

  • He fixed me with a sickly grin, and said, "I told you it wouldn't work!"From the entry fix
  • The emaciated prisoners in the death camps were weak and sickly.From the entry emaciated
  • I took in the sickly cat and cured him up.From the entry cure up
  • PETRA: Is a ravenous and deranged fish-eyed monster with a sickly complexion on Whisper Isle.2017, H.S. Crow, Lunora and the Monster King, →ISBN, page 8. From the entry fish-eyed
  • And there was the sickly smell too that no night air could clear.1999, Rhona Petrie, Dead Loss, Chivers, →ISBN, page 43. From the entry cleaving
  • There seemed to be a queer odor in the air, a sickly, bathroomy odor.1975, Stephen Goldin, Herds, page 25. From the entry bathroomy
  • The old maple stump shot sickly pink switches from her roots, new switches every year.1944, Emily Carr, “Life Loves Living”, in The House of All Sorts. From the entry yearningly
  • He smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor.1903, Bret Harte, The Society upon the Stanislaus. From the entry curl up
  • If Harry had always seemed a sickly child, Harrow put paid to notions that he was really a physical weakling.2010, David Brown, Palmerston: A Biography. From the entry put paid to
  • Someone had attempted to make the foul ambience less offensive by liberal squirtings with a sickly sweet freshener.2010, Caroline Graham, A Place of Safety. From the entry squirting
  • Q was only there a week, think of how sickly the other animals that they adopt are there!2002 August 12, AAS, “Q update, part deux”, in rec.pets.cats.community (Usenet), retrieved 04 Jun 2022. From the entry spithole
  • 'She's gey sickly, but more worrit that she should be sick at all than by whatever it is itself.'1926, Marshall Newton Goold, Heather Heretics, page 204. From the entry worrit
  • Sickly or not, they certainly combine with the extraordinarily steep lawns to contribute to the theatrical ‘other-worldliness’ of the park – nineteenth-century virtual reality.2001, Alan Tate, “Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Paris”, in Great City Parks, London; New York, N.Y.: Spon Press, published 2003, →ISBN, page…. From the entry other-worldliness
  • The author disembarks from a Lake Champlain skiff at Burlington, which resembles a fishing-town on the seacoast, although there is a sickly, unbriny smell about.1965, Robert L. Gale, Plots and characters in the fiction and sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Archon Books, page 154. From the entry unbriny
  • That cowardly, sickly little boy you fought for in the street, that day in Winnebago, showed every sign of growing up a cowardly, sickly man.1917, Edna Ferber, Fanny Herself, page 173. From the entry fan
  • The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow.1913 August, Jack London, chapter XXXI, in John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 280. From the entry scraggly
  • Oppressive anaglyptas, sickly floral designs or ugly woodchip paper made us long for smooth painted walls that would not detract attention from our furniture or paintings.2002, Abigail Trow, Surface: Textures, Finishes and Materials for Stylish Interiors, page 61. From the entry anaglypta
  • So Lyra clung to Pantalaimon and her head swam and her gorge rose, and cold as the night was, a sickly sweat moistened her flesh with something colder still.1996 April, Philip Pullman, “Fencing”, in The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials; 1), 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf…. From the entry gorge

Meaning of sickly

  1. adjective Frequently ill or in poor health; weakly.
  2. adjective Not in good health; (somewhat) sick.
  3. adjective Characterized by poor or unhealthy growth. (of a plant).

Full definition of sickly

Questions about sickly in a sentence

How do you use sickly in a sentence?
Sickly is used as an adjective, verb and adverb. For example: “He fixed me with a sickly grin, and said, "I told you it wouldn't work!"”
What is a short sentence with sickly?
“a sickly child”
What does sickly mean?
Sickly means frequently ill or in poor health; weakly.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sickly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use sickly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/sickly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.