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sickly

[sik-lee] / ˈsɪk li /




Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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He is still haunted by cases where sellers could not be located, or the team arrived too late, finding the creatures either dead or so sickly they died soon after rescue.

From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026

In Mr. Harris’s telling, long before Augustus came to rule vast swaths of the earth, he was a sickly boy named Octavius, bullied by schoolmates until the far-stronger Agrippa became his protector.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

“Horsegirls” might read on paper as too sickly sweet, but Meyering’s thoughtful direction and star Lillian Carrier’s performance keep it from tipping too far in that direction.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2026

The “Brat” pop star re-teams with her “360” and “Guess” music video director for a satire about struggling to ditch her sickly green branding.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 1, 2026

Majestic as she was, the poor creature’s skin looked too pale and sickly.

From "Dactyl Hill Squad" by Daniel José Older

He’s big, menacing and worthy to own, but I would have preferred his older, sicklier version in which he acted as a caretaker for Professor X in the film “Logan.”

From Washington Times ● May 29, 2019

The Greek lamp of Monarchism, which has been burning with an ever sicklier flame, went out.

From Time Magazine Archive

The latter, as the significance of the question came home to him, went even a sicklier white, like the belly of a dead fish.

From The Untamed by Max Brand

The perfume of flowers—the faint sweetness of mimosa and the sicklier fragrance of hyacinths—seemed almost overwhelming, for the fire was warm and the windows closed.

From The Illustrious Prince by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

Its dark-green hue, its sicklier tints all fail, And rip'ening harvest rustles in the gale.

From The Farmer's Boy A Rural Poem by Robert Bloomfield

It’s a family joke that they have the sickliest pets in history.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 15, 2021

A bunged-up court system made foreclosure all but impossible, so owners of even the sickliest of companies could spend lavishly without fear of repercussions.

From Economist ● Apr. 19, 2018

This is also a bank that marketed complex derivatives to Europe’s sickliest bank, Monte dei Paschi in Italy.

From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2016

Healthiest section of the U. S. from the typhoid aspect is New England; sickliest, the east south-central region.

From Time Magazine Archive

He looked about the room less blankly; then by degrees fashioned his visage into the sickliest grin that ever libeled all smiling.

From The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales by Ambrose Bierce

They are Reds who have been, if not sicklied o'er, at least noticeably bleached, if not by the pale cast of thought, then by the bright sun of circumstance.

From Time Magazine Archive

In the middle of a second act seance various ectoplasmic entities wander about the darkness sicklied o'er with the pale cast of greenish spotlights.

From Time Magazine Archive

The town -- the greater Bay Area, for that matter -- is sicklied o'er with restaurants.

From Time Magazine Archive

Oh, nothing, I'm just a little sicklied o'er ...

From Time Magazine Archive

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

From Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett

He imagined the first beginnings of suspicion; he saw it filming the eyes of his acquaintances, then of his friends, and at last sicklying over the face even of his brother Silas.

From Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment 1898 by Edward Bellamy

Growing quite staid in manner, the weight of India adding gravity to his looks, sicklying his young face o'er with pale cast of thought.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 by Various

And therefore West, after an hour of delightful tête-à-tête in the charming little back parlor, stiffened himself up, his brow sicklying o'er with the pale cast of disagreeable thought, and began to make it.

From Queed by Raymond Moreau Crosby

They believe that on public occasions the chuprassies have sometimes the power of sicklying them o'er with the pale cast of neglect.

From Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series by George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

No sicklying taint of sorrow overlies the lucid lake of liquid love, upon which, hand in hand, Aline and I are to float into eternity!

From The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan by Sir W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert




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