Word.ws English Dictionary

sicklying

sicklying is the present participle and gerund of sickly.

Meaning of sickly

Verb

sickly (third-person singular simple present sicklies, present participle sicklying, simple past and past participle sicklied)

  1. (archaic, literary, transitive) To make (something) sickly.
    • Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
      And thus the native hue of resolution
      Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  2. (intransitive, rare) To become sickly.
    • But the seven most prominent Apostles […] still hang together, their hearts tormented with eager yet sad questionings, their hopes fast sicklying over with the pale hues of doubt.1889, Samuel Cox, An Expositor’s Notebook, London: Richard D. Dickinson, 7th edition, Chapter 26, p. 364

See all 14 meanings of sickly

Questions about sicklying

What is sicklying the present participle and gerund of?
Sicklying is the present participle and gerund of sickly.

Words near sicklying in the dictionary

  1. sicklist
  2. sicklists
  3. sickly
  4. sickly sweet
  5. sickly-sweet
  6. sicklying
  7. sickman
  8. sickmen
  9. sicknes
  10. sickneses
  11. sickness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sicklying (page history and authors); sickly (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: “sicklying.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sicklying. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.