# sick

Pronunciation: say "SIK" /sɪk/

## Adjective

1. Affected by an illness or otherwise in poor physical health.
   - Simple: Not feeling well because of an illness or disease.
   - _Half the office was sick during flu season._
   - _The sick child was kept home for a week to recover._
2. Tired of or annoyed by something that has gone on too long.
   - Simple: Feeling tired of and annoyed by something.
   - _Voters were sick of broken promises by election day._
   - _He grew sick of the constant noise from the construction site._
3. Experiencing nausea or the urge to vomit.
   - Simple: Feeling like you might throw up.
   - _The smell of gasoline always makes him sick._
   - _Passengers grew sick as the ferry rocked in the heavy waves._
4. Morbid, twisted, or cruel in a shocking way: of a person, disturbed and seeming to enjoy cruelty; of humor or remarks, treating death or suffering in an offensive way. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Cruel, twisted, or shocking. Used of people with disturbing minds, or jokes about death or suffering that offend.
   - _The novel's villain is genuinely sick, delighting in the pain of others._
   - _He must be sick to treat animals that way._
5. Remarkably good; excellent or impressive. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Very good, cool, or impressive.
   - _The band's new album is absolutely sick._
   - _He pulled off a sick move in the final seconds of the game._
8. In poor condition; not functioning or performing properly.
   - Simple: In bad condition and not working well.
   - _The mechanic warned that the transmission was sick and needed replacing._
   - _Trade slowed as the market looked increasingly sick._
11. Of soil or land, no longer able to sustain adequate harvests of a particular crop.
   - Simple: Of soil or land, no longer able to grow healthy crops.
   - _Decades of cotton left the soil sick and barely productive._
   - _After decades of potatoes, the soil was so sick that new plants came up small and weak._

## Verb

6. To fall ill; to begin to suffer from disease. *(dialectal)*
   - Simple: To start to become ill.
7. To vomit; to expel the contents of the stomach through the mouth. *(colloquial, Australia, British)*
   - Simple: To throw up the food in your stomach.
   - _Several passengers began to sick up during the stormy crossing._
   - _After the long, bumpy bus ride, my little brother sicked all over his new shoes._

## Noun

9. Vomit; matter expelled from the stomach through the mouth. *(colloquial, Australia, British)*
   - Simple: The food and liquid that comes up when someone throws up.
   - _The smell of sick lingered in the train carriage all morning._
   - _He wiped the sick off his shoes after the rough ferry crossing._
10. A state benefit or allowance paid by the government to support people who are ill, disabled, or unable to work. *(colloquial, British)*
   - Simple: Money the government pays to people who are too ill to work.
   - _After the diagnosis, he went on the sick for several months._
   - _After his injury he went on the sick, but the payments barely cover his rent._

## Verb

12. Another spelling of sic: to make someone or something, especially a dog, attack or go after someone. *(rare)* — Alternative spelling of sic (“set upon”).
   - Simple: Alternative spelling of sic. Use this when telling a dog or person to attack someone.
   - _Guards would sick the dogs on anyone who climbed the fence._
   - _If trespassers appear, the rancher will sick his cattle dogs on them._

## Origin

**Meanings 1–11** — From Middle English sik, from Old English sēoc ("sick, ill"), going back to Proto-Germanic *seukaz; a link to a Proto-Indo-European root *sewg- ("to be troubled or grieved") has been proposed but is uncertain. The "very good, excellent" sense is a positive shift from the original "in poor health" meaning, similar to how terrific and wicked developed.
**Meaning 12** — A variant of sic, which itself was an alteration of seek.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/sick (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).