Word family noun sick the sick sickness sicko adjective sick sickening sickly verb sicken adverb sickeningly sickly
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsicklysick‧ly /ˈsɪkli/ adjective 1 ILLa sickly person or animal is weak, unhealthy, and often ill a sickly child She looked pale and sickly.► see thesaurus at ill2 UNPLEASANT especially British English a sickly smell, taste etc is unpleasant and makes you feel sick A sickly smell clung to his clothes and hair.► see thesaurus at sweet3 a sickly colour or light is unpleasantly pale or weak The walls were painted a sickly green. a pale sickly moon —sickly adverb a sickly sweet perfumeExamples from the Corpus
sickly• His wife was sickly and he also feared for his young son's life.• She liked her coffee sweet and sickly below a head of warm foam.• He suffered from allergies, like his great-uncle Theodore Roosevelt, and was a sickly child for much of his early years.• He was a sickly child with a bad chest and a permanent cough.• Daryl was a pale, sickly child.• My brother grew up as if he was a sickly child.• Louise, who was often sickly, couldn't join in the other children's games.• This improbable though captivating adventure slides neatly from sickly empire to bloody revolution that tears the lovers apart.• It was hot and jammed and the air was redolent with the sickly sweet smell of cheap champagne.• The melons were overripe and had a sickly taste.• It was indeed an adult version of the sickly white faces of the boys in the playground.• Every surface glistened green and a sickly white.sickly child• My brother grew up as if he was a sickly child.• There was a handful of verminous women, too, and even a few sickly children.• I was a very sickly child, and so my memories of those first years are dark.• He suffered from allergies, like his great-uncle Theodore Roosevelt, and was a sickly child for much of his early years.• She was a sickly child, frequently in and out of hospital.• Patsy was a sickly child, growing very little in the first few years of his life.• Favouritism is equally bad for the favourite, who is often a sickly child, or the baby of the family.• Indeed, he was a sickly child, succumbing with monotonous regularity to ear and throat infections.sickly smell• As I lay in the ditch I was suddenly conscious of a very strong indescribably sickly smell.• He hadn't shaved for a few days and a sickly smell clung to his clothes and hair.• When the wind was in the west a sickly smell floated over the pits.• As usual, it was the strange smell that repelled him - a sweet sickly smell that he couldn't identify.sickly sweet• There can be virtue in the parlance of sincerity, sickly sweet as it seems.• Suddenly, he felt a warning, just a hint of the sickly sweet odour he remembered so vividly from the marketplace.• It was hot and jammed and the air was redolent with the sickly sweet smell of cheap champagne.• And again there was that sickly sweet stench of cooked flesh which clogged his nostrils and made him want to vomit.• He was fuming about it when Yolanda hopped into his car, the sickly sweet stink of her perfume almost choking him. 