sickliness

English

Etymology

From sickly +‎ -ness.

Noun

sickliness (usually uncountable, plural sicklinesses)

1. The state or characteristic of weakness, incapacity, or physical distress due to poor health, especially of a chronic nature.
   • 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act 2, scene 1]:

     I do beseech your majesty, impute his words
     To wayward sickliness and age in him.

   • 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 9, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:

     Gradually it gave place to a smile; a feeble, helpless, melancholy smile; bland, almost to sickliness.

   • 1847 December, Acton Bell [pseudonym; Anne Brontë], chapter 7, in Agnes Grey. […], London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC:

     My devotions were disturbed with a feeling of languor and sickliness, and the tormenting fear of its becoming worse: and a depressing headache was generally my companion throughout the day.

Synonyms

• unwellness

Related terms

• sick
• sickness

 

Translations

the state or characteristic of weakness, incapacity, or physical distress due to poor health

• Irish: meath-thinneas m