sick

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Not healthy; ill.

   She stayed home from school because she was sick.

2. 2
   adj

   Feeling like you are going to vomit.

   I felt sick after the long boat ride.

3. 3
   adj

   Very tired of or annoyed by something.

   I'm sick of waiting in this long queue.

4. 4
   adj

   In very bad taste; cruel or disturbing.

   That's a sick joke and nobody laughed.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Sick is an Old English word and was the ordinary English term for someone physically unwell before ill entered the language in the early Middle Ages. It remains the usual term in American English.

From Middle English sik, sike, seek, seke, seok, from Old English sēoc (“sick, ill”), from Proto-West Germanic *seuk, from Proto-Germanic *seukaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sewg- (“to be troubled or grieved”). See also West Frisian siik, Dutch ziek, German siech, Norwegian Bokmål syk, Norwegian Nynorsk sjuk, Danish syg; also Middle Irish socht (“silence, depression”), Old Armenian հիւծանիմ (hiwcanim, “to be weakening”). The "very good, excellent" sense is an ameliorative semantic shift from the original sense of "in poor health". Compare similar semantic development in terrific and wicked.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary