Word.ws English Dictionary

sick

/ˈsɪk/

sick adjective: in poor health; ill. Also the alternative spelling of sic.

Adjective

sick (comparative sicker, superlative sickest)

  1. In poor health; ill.
    • We have to care for the sick.
    • 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...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...
    Antonyms:
    fit, healthy, well
    1. [with with] Afflicted by (a specific condition, usually medical).
      • She was sick all day with the flu.
      • sick with a cold—sick with contagious diseases—sick with sciatica—sick with love—sick with worry
  2. Having an urge to vomit.
    • My daughter was violently sick three times in the night.
    • 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...1913, The Texas criminal reports, page 8
  3. (colloquial) Mentally unstable, disturbed.
    • You sick bastard!
    • What a sick, sick feeling / To let you go, my dear2018, Boy Pablo, “Sick Feeling”
  4. (colloquial) In bad taste.
    • That’s a sick joke.
  5. [with of] Tired of or annoyed by (something that has lasted a long time or often recurs).
    • sick and tired of the whining—sick of waiting—'sick of politics
    • 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.
    • He showed off his sick surfing skills.
    Antonyms:
    crap, naff, uncool
  7. In poor condition.
    • sick building syndrome; my car is looking pretty sick; my job prospects are pretty sick
  8. Failing to sustain adequate harvests of crop, usually specified.

Noun

sick (uncountable)

  1. (Australia, UK, colloquial) Vomit.
    • […] they're spitting and belching chunks of lentilly gunk. Looks like sick.2003, Lynsey Calderwood, Cracked: Recovering After Traumatic Brain Injury, page 132
    • The bogan, true to form, laps it up like a dog does its own sick.2010, Michael Jayfox, E. Chas McSween, Intravenus DeMilo, Enron Hubbard, Hunter McKenzie-Smythe, Flash Johnson, Things Bogans Like, Sydney: Hachette, page 80
    Synonyms:
    vomit
  2. (UK, 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.

Verb

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

  1. (Australia, UK, colloquial) To vomit.
    • I woke up at 4 am and sicked on the floor.
  2. (intransitive, obsolete except in dialect) To fall sick; to sicken.
    • Our great-grandsire, Edward, sick'd and died.c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...
    • Old man to pickney, so wave unno hand if you with me /To see the sufferation sick me.2005, Damian Marley, “Welcome to Jamrock”, in Welcome to Jamrock(album)

Proper noun capitalized: Sick

Sick (plural Sicks)

  1. A surname from German.

Also used as

sick is also the alternative spelling of sic.

sick meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

sick in Hindi

ill, used as a substantive: sick people, collectively
अस्वस्थ asvasth

sick in Tamil

நோய்வாய்ப்பட்ட, நோயுற்றவர்

sick in Marathi

आजारी

sick in Urdu

بیمار
More languagesFewer languages
sick in Bengali
অসুস্থ
sick in Telugu
జబ్బుపడిన
sick in Malayalam
രോഗിയായവർ
sick in Punjabi
ਬਿਮਾਰ
sick in Gujarati
બીમાર, માંદા
sick in Odia
ଅସୁସ୍ଥ
sick in Malay
pesakit
sick in Thai
เจ๋ง jěng, อ้วก ûuak

Examples of sick in a sentence

  • Dude, this car's got a sick subwoofer!
  • Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
  • Henry said I believe I feel sick and got up and went out.1913, The Texas criminal reports, page 8:
  • I feel sick, like I might vomit, and I'm more tired than I can ever remember feeling.2013, Cheryl Rainfield, Stained, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 38:
  • I’m so sick of that same old love, the kind that breaks your heart.2015, “Same Old Love”, in Revival, performed by Selena Gomez:

All 40 example sentences with sick

Synonyms of sick

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of sick

Forms of sick

Adjective
comparativesicker
superlativesickest
Verb
third-person singular presentsicks
present participlesicking
past participlesicked
pastsicked
Proper noun
pluralSicks

Origin of sick

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 and Swedish sjuk, Danish syg; also Middle Irish socht (“silence, depression”), Old Armenian հիւծանիմ (hiwcanim, “to be weakening”). The "very good, excellent" sense is an ameliorative semantic shift from the original sense of "in poor health". Compare similar semantic development in terrific and wicked.

Variant of sic, itself an alteration of seek.

* As a Dutch and German surname, shortened from names like Siegfried, Siegmund and similar. Compare Sieck, Zeek. * As a Czech surname, Americanized from Šik; also Slovene, Carpathian Rusyn, and Serbo-Croatian Šic, converged from several origins such as síč (“sower”), the source of Schuetz, or Slavicized from Hungarian szűcs (“furrier”). Compare Shick.

Words formed from sick

Phrases with sick

68 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with sick

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sick

What does sick mean?
Sick means in poor health; ill.
What is sick in Hindi?
Sick in Hindi is अस्वस्थ (asvasth). See Sick meaning in Hindi.
How do you use sick in a sentence?
Dude, this car's got a sick subwoofer!
What part of speech is sick?
Sick can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce sick?
Sick is pronounced /ˈsɪk/.

Words near sick in the dictionary

  1. Sicilies
  2. Sicily
  3. sicing
  4. sicistine
  5. sicistines
  6. sick
  7. sick and tired
  8. sick and twisted
  9. sick as a cat
  10. sick as a dog
  11. sick as a horse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sick (page history and authors); Sick (page history and authors); sick (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sick (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-sick.ogg, en-us-sick.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sick.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sick. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.