sicker
Verbsickers, sickering, sickered
Formssickers, sickering, sickered
- 1Comparative of sick.
By the second day of the flu he was even sicker than the first.
The longer the patient waited for treatment, the sicker he grew.
Note
The ordinary comparative, and an old one: Old English already had sēocra, sick plus -er. It carries every meaning of sick, so it can mean more ill, more nauseated, more disturbed, or more fed up (sicker of the noise). Watch the identical spelling. The obsolete 'certain' adjective is a different word altogether, a cousin of sure and secure.
- 2To seep, trickle, or ooze slowly, as water working its way through a crack or porous surface.
Spring water sickers through the limestone and gathers in hidden pools.
No drop of water fell from the hot blue Or sickered from the skeleton of earth.
1917, Gerhart Hauptmann, Ludwig LewisohnNote
A third, unrelated word comes from Old English sicerian, 'to ooze', and a Germanic root for slow-running water. It is intransitive and wants a preposition of path: through the debris, from the earth, into his soul. Ludwig Lewisohn's 1917 Hauptmann translation uses it literally, while Jakob Wassermann's Wedlock (1926) lets a cause sicker into a soul. Its forms are regular: sickers, sickering, sickered.
- 3Secure; safe and protected from danger or harm.
I'm as great on the side o' the law as it's siccar to be in thae uncertain times.
1896, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The RaidersNote
Safety rather than conviction is the point here: a sicker path is one you can walk without fear. Edmund Spenser used the word in 1579, and it held on in regional writing long afterward. L. B. Walford has 'made sicker' in 1880, and Samuel Rutherford Crockett's The Raiders (1896) spells it siccar, the form a Scots voice gives it.
Less common meanings
- 4Certain; sure that something is true or will happen.
Note
A borrowing from Latin sēcūrus, 'without care', that reached Old English as sicer. Sure and secure descend from the same Latin word by other routes. Here it means certain in the mind, and it takes a that-clause just as sure does: I'm sicker that he's not home. It is obsolete and dialectal, so in modern prose it reads as deliberate period or regional color.
- 5In a secure manner; safely and firmly.
Note
The manner adverb that goes with the 'secure' adjective: it follows the verb and tells how firmly something was done, as in penned sicker or fastened sicker. That position separates it from the 'certainly' adverb, which comments on the truth of a statement rather than on the way an action was carried out.
- 6Certainly; assuredly, without doubt.
Note
An adverb that never took -ly: the bare form that serves as the adjective also vouches for a whole statement, the way surely does. It usually stands at the front, set off by a comma, or just before the verb it reinforces. Like the rest of this family, it is obsolete and dialectal, and it belongs only in deliberately old-fashioned or regional voices.
Showing meanings only.
sicker is a form of sick
sick, adjective: Affected by an illness or otherwise in poor physical health. Full entry
- Spelling
- sick → sicker: add -er
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Origins
This is simply the comparative form of "sick," meaning "more sick." It was inherited from Middle English siker (also spelled sikker, sykkere), from Old English sēocra, and is equivalent to sick plus the ending -er.
It came from Middle English siker, from Old English sicer or sicor, going back through Proto-West Germanic *sikur ("free, secure") to Latin sēcūrus ("secure," literally "without care"). It is a doublet of sure and secure.
It was inherited from Middle English *sikeren, from Old English sicerian ("to ooze, seep"), from Proto-West Germanic *sikarōn and Proto-Germanic *sikarōną ("to trickle"), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sīką ("slow running water"). It is cognate with German sickern ("to seep, trickle").