Synonyms for sickly
- adjective
Synonyms by meaning
Adjective
1. Sick
sick, ailing, ill, unwell, infirm, bad, diseased, poorly, seedy, indisposed, peaked, rough, invalid, under the weather, sickish
2. Weak — lacking intensity or vigour
weak, feeble, insipid, delicate, puny US, unsound, weakly, flimsy, languishing, frail, languid, faint dated
3. Unhealthy — tending to produce disease or poor health
4. Cloying — overly sweet
Other
pale, wan, haggard, sallow, nauseating, sickening, ropey, valetudinarian formal, healthless, pallid, noisome formal, valetudinary dated
Definitions
- adj. 1
Lacking intensity or vigour.
- adj. 2
Overly sweet.
- adj. 3
Tending to produce disease or poor health.
a sickly autumn; a sickly climate
- adj. 4
Frequently ill or in poor health; weakly.
Related words
- Word family
- sicklily sickliness
- Phrases
- sickly sweet
Example sentences
- sick The doctor sat up all night with the sick old man.
- ill They called in a doctor because the child was ill.
- unwell I pretended to be unwell in order to stay at home.
- ailing Yanni left to Algiers to take care of his ailing mother.
- feeble The feeble patient is suffering from stomach cancer.
- insipid Water tastes insipid after it has been boiled.
By length
- 3 letters
- bad1, ill1, wan1
- 4 letters
- sick1, weak1, pale1, puny2
- 5 letters
- rough1, faint1, frail1, seedy2, ropey
- 6 letters
- poorly2, peaked1, morbid2, feeble2, weakly2, ailing2, unwell2, flimsy2, infirm2, pallid2, sallow
- 7 letters
- invalid3, haggard2, unsound2, insipid3, languid2, cloying2, mawkish2, noisome, sickish
- 8 letters
- delicate3, diseased2
- 9 letters
- unhealthy3, sickening3
- 10 letters
- nauseating4, saccharine3, indisposed, healthless
- 11 letters
- languishing3, unwholesome
- 12 letters
- insalubrious, valetudinary
- 14 letters
- valetudinarian
The small number after each word is its number of syllables (puny2 = 2 syllables).
In other languages
- Français
- maladif
- Italiano
- malaticcio
- Español
- enfermizo
- Català
- malaltís