Word.ws English Dictionary

throw a sickie

throw a sickie verb: to take a day off from work for ill health (either real or feigned).

Verb

throw a sickie (third-person singular simple present throws a sickie, present participle throwing a sickie, simple past threw a sickie, past participle thrown a sickie)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, UK, slang) To take a day off from work for ill health (either real or feigned).
    • Hogie said, “Listen, I′m throwing a sickie. I don′t need to be there until opening day tomorrow. The staff don′t arrive till then anyway so as long as I'm in early I can′t see a problem.”1997, Nicholas Blincoe, Jello Salad, page 49
    • It is like throwing a ‘sickie’ in Britain today — you can sign-off work on your own say-so for sick benefit for up to five days.2005, Callum G. Brown, The Unconverted and the Conversion, Jan N. Bremmer, Wout J. van Bekkum, Arie L. Molendijk (editors), Paradigms, Poetics, and Politics of Conversion: Gender Relations in the...
    Synonyms:
    pull a sickie

Synonyms of throw a sickie

Forms of throw a sickie

third-person singular presentthrows a sickie
present participlethrowing a sickie
pastthrew a sickie
past participlethrown a sickie
alternative formchuck a sickie

Questions about throw a sickie

What does throw a sickie mean?
Throw a sickie means to take a day off from work for ill health (either real or feigned).
What part of speech is throw a sickie?
Throw a sickie is a verb.
What is the past tense of throw a sickie?
The past tense of throw a sickie is threw a sickie.

Words near throw a sickie in the dictionary

  1. throw a kiss
  2. throw a mickey
  3. throw a monkey wrench in the works
  4. throw a monkey wrench into the works
  5. throw a party
  6. throw a sickie
  7. throw a spanner in the works
  8. throw a spanner into the works
  9. throw a sprat to catch a mackerel
  10. throw a tantrum
  11. throw a wet blanket on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throw a sickie (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-throw a sickie.ogg.

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