sickness

From Middle English sikness, from Old English sēocnes. By surface analysis, sick +‎ -ness.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɪknɪs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: sick‧ness
• Rhymes: -ɪknɪs

sickness (usually uncountable, plural sicknesses)

1. The quality or state of being sick or diseased; illness.
   • c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     I do lament the sickness of the king.

   • 18th century, Alexander Pope, Epistle to Miss Blount

     Trust not too much your now resistless charms; Those, age or sickness soon or late disarms.

   • 23 March 1816, Jane Austen, a letter:

     Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life.

2. Nausea; qualmishness; as, sickness of stomach.
3. (linguistics) The analogical misuse of a rarer or marked grammatical case in the place of a more common or unmarked case.
   • 1997, Michael B. Smith, “§ 4.7”, in Quirky Case in Icelandic:

     We can now return to the question of how we treat the phenomenon of dative sickness (the possibility of substituting dative in place of accusative on the experiencer nominal) in Icelandic.

• (quality or state of being sick): disease, illness, infirmity, malady

• “sickness”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.