Word.ws English Dictionary

sick lit

sick lit noun: literature focusing on an ill character or characters.

Noun

sick lit (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, often) Literature focusing on an ill character or characters.
    • Despite being another installation in what has been coined the "sick-lit" genre (think Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper) […]2013 October, Ali Millington, “Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars”, in City OnTopic, page 20
    • Often called "ten-hankie-novels" or "tearjerkers," teen sick-lit utilizes a characteristic formula that combines an illness plotline with a romance plotline.2014, Julie Passanante Elman, Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation, page 94

Forms of sick lit

alternative formsick-lit
alternative formsicklit

Origin of sick lit

sick + lit (“literature”), as a play on chick lit.

Questions about sick lit

What does sick lit mean?
Sick lit means literature focusing on an ill character or characters.
What part of speech is sick lit?
Sick lit is a noun.

Words near sick lit in the dictionary

  1. sick joke
  2. sick jokes
  3. sick leave
  4. sick list
  5. sick lists
  6. sick lit
  7. sick man
  8. sick man of Asia
  9. sick man of East Asia
  10. sick man of Europe
  11. sick men

Source and license

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