Word.ws English Dictionary

sick at heart

sick at heart adjective: despairing, distressed, or anxious.

Adjective

sick at heart (not generally comparable, comparative sicker at heart, superlative sickest at heart)

  1. (idiomatic, not comparable, usually) Despairing, distressed, or anxious.
    • I became sick at heart. My countenance was painted with the hues of ill health and vexation.1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter V, in The Last Man. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC
    • Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, and almost ready to lie down and die, the unhappy King who had so long stood firm, began to fail.1853, Charles Dickens, A Child's History of England, Ch. 12—Henry the Second

Examples of sick at heart in a sentence

  • Sick at heart and oppressed with his feeling of loneliness and impotence, he could only look at her in speechless misery.1919, Ralph Connor, chapter 19, in The Major:
  • So we weep for two or three years more, very quietly, and then one day, too sick at heart, we die, with no fuss, leaving as little trace on earth as a bird's flight across the sky.1963 December 13, “Playwrights: Cynicism Uncongealed”, in Time, retrieved 05 Dec 2018:
  • I, too, have been made sick at heart by the many mistakes made by civilian and military commanders and the terrible price we have paid for them."2007 August 20, Jeff Zeleny, “At veterans convention, Clinton and McCain differ on Iraq”, in New York Times, retrieved 05 Dec 2018:

Forms of sick at heart

comparativesicker at heart
superlativesickest at heart

Origin of sick at heart

From Hamlet, Act I, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare: : Francisco: For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart.

Questions about sick at heart

What does sick at heart mean?
Sick at heart means despairing, distressed, or anxious.
How do you use sick at heart in a sentence?
Sick at heart and oppressed with his feeling of loneliness and impotence, he could only look at her in speechless misery.
What part of speech is sick at heart?
Sick at heart is an adjective.

Words near sick at heart in the dictionary

  1. sick as a cat
  2. sick as a dog
  3. sick as a horse
  4. sick as a parrot
  5. sick ass
  6. sick at heart
  7. sick bag
  8. sick bags
  9. sick bay
  10. sick bays
  11. sick building

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sick at heart (page history and authors). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-sick at heart.ogg.

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