sick1
/sɪk
/- Several staff members were already off sick with the flu.
- Fifteen to twenty percent of the elderly who are sick with pneumococci die from this infection, so it is well worth preventing.
- The end results were anything but pleasant for Niko who spent a week after the incident in the hospital ward sick with fever and poison from snakes bite.
Synonyms
- Meanwhile, the Guild will be holding it's annual door to door collection in the parish next month to help fund the sending of sick parishioners on the Pilgrimage.
- ‘The bargaining council is once again at risk of collapsing, which would mean no more provident or sick fund for workers,’ he said.
- She didn't fall for any of those phony ‘help-the-homeless’ funds that the sick hedonists kept trying to sell to dupes.
- Whatever the continuing vitality to be found in the villages, the larger political and economic systems are sick.
- The recent events are nothing but reflections of a sick society where rampant corruption, political vendetta and laxity in criminal justice are the order of the day.
- We live in a really sad and sick society and obviously ~ no one cares.
- On the morning of October 17, 1999, Wei sent his wife to Renji Hospital, when Zhou became extremely sick and started vomiting.
- She ran to her bathroom and vomited, relieving the sick sensation a bit, but not entirely.
- Recalling his first trip in the air, Tu said he felt very sick and even vomited.
Synonyms
- A sick thrill of excitement travelled through his body.
- The sick feeling returned to him again and he knew it would be setting up shop for quite awhile now.
- A scared face looked back at her, and a lonely and sick emotion filled the eyes of that face.
- But just doing the best we can and that the owners, of course, are sick about it.
- There is something inherently sick about seeking to profit from deceit.
- To be honest, I feel so sick about the whole thing that even the memory of the try I scored does nothing to relieve the gloom.
Synonyms
Synonyms
- Laughing at his own sick humour, Suarez ascended to the second level of the house, more designed to live in than the level below.
- We're also unmistakably in David Cronenberg territory here, but without the sick humour that usually goes with it.
- The sick charm of Keller is that he really does seem like a normal everyday person.
Synonyms
- But if you use that as an excuse to inflict pain on them, then you are sick and sadistic and motivated solely by bigotry.
- They are sick and depraved and have convinced themselves they are right and the rest of us are wrong.
- Apparently, there were some bogus calls that were made in to try and - you know, for whatever reason, some sick people would do that.
- So, while I cleaned cat sick off the carpet Paul headed off home to finish putting his kitchen back together now that the painting is finished.
- The group are taken on a tour of Wimbledon tennis centre where they are made to wear all white and are force fed strawberries until they vomit red sick.
- I arrived downstairs find to both cats outside and a pile of sick in the middle of the sitting room carpet.
Phrases
be sick
get sick
make someone sick
—— oneself sick
on the sick
sick and tired of
(as) sick as a dog
(as) sick as a parrot
sick to the teeth (or back teeth) of
the sick man of ——
sick to death of
sick to one's stomach
Derivatives
sickish
- I have to now face the fact that I, who am rarely sick, have been sickish for a week now, mostly with coughing phlegmy runny nose-and-eyes ick.
- Because of ionization, the choking air filled with a sickish sweet ‘electric smell.’
- Rising gradually to her feet, those sickish green eyes met the Captain's level, immediately locking on to those specks of electric blue.
Origin
Old English sēoc 'affected by illness', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ziek and German siech.
The Old English word sick was the usual way of referring to someone physically unwell before ill arrived in the Middle Ages, and is still normal use in the USA. A variety of animals have cropped up over the centuries in phrases emphasizing how ill someone is feeling. The first was the dog, back in the early 18th century. Other comparisons include the horse, the pig, and the cat, the latter well known for its problems with hairballs, and so common a comparison that ‘to cat’ was 19th-century schoolboy slang for ‘to vomit’. All these phrases refer to physical sickness, whereas being as sick as a parrot is a mental state, to do with feeling depressed. This goes back to the 1970s and is particularly associated with despondent footballers and managers being interviewed after a defeat. The phrase may have been suggested by the Dead Parrot sketch in the television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. The opposite is over the moon— see moon.
Tsar Nicholas I of Russia reportedly said of the Sultan of Turkey in 1853: ‘I am not so eager about what shall be done when the sick man dies, as I am to determine with England what shall not be done upon that event taking place.’ His remarks reflected the precarious state of the Ottoman Empire and its slow but inevitable disintegration. Political commentators exploited this view and started to refer to Turkey as the sick man of Europe. The expression the sick man of— was applied to other countries over the following decades, and now often refers to factors other than economics or politics.
Rhymes
sick2
/sɪk/- Sparrow was so offended, he recalled, that ‘I nearly sicked my dog on him,’ but his mother intervened, establishing a selling price that was ‘high enough, so I wasn't mad at her.’
- Sure some of the people would run after us with their guns or throw rocks or sick their dogs on us but it was fun.
- He looked back at the girl, ‘If you don't pay me the rest of the money for that drink I'll sick Jumper on you’.
- She will learn her place even if we have to sick Longmeyer on her.
- I swear if you say anything mean to him I'll beat you up… okay, so maybe it won't be me, per se, but I'll sick Danny on you.
Origin
Mid 19th century: dialect variant of seek.