My desire to become a doctor grew out of looking after my sickly brother.
Source: tatoeba (28065)
Sickly
//ˈsɪkli//
Synonyms for "sickly" (142 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (29)
Strong matches (42)
Related words (71)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Synonyms
1 entriesderived
4 entriesderived from
1 entriesrelated to
17 entriesShowing 16 of 17 words.
similar
4 entriesTranslations
99 translations across 25 languages.
Ancient Greek
2 entries- ἄρρωστος adj (frequently ill)
- ἄρρωστος adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
Arabic
1 entries- مِسْقَام adj (frequently ill)
Asturian
1 entries- enfermizu adj (frequently ill)
Bulgarian
3 entries- бледен adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
- болнав adj (frequently ill)
- слаб adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
Catalan
4 entries- malaltís adj (frequently ill)
- malaltís adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
- malaltós adj (frequently ill)
- malaltús adj (frequently ill)
Dutch
1 entries- ziekelijk adj (frequently ill)
Esperanto
1 entries- malsanema adj (frequently ill)
Finnish
4 entries- epäterveellinen adj (tending to produce disease or poor health)
- heikko adj (shedding a relatively small amount of light)
- heikko adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
- himmeä adj (shedding a relatively small amount of light)
French
4 entries- chétif adj (frequently ill)
- douceâtre adj (overly sweet)
- douçâtre adj (overly sweet)
- maladif adj (frequently ill)
Galician
1 entries- enfermizo adj (frequently ill)
German
4 entries- abgeschlagen adj (appearing ill)
- blass adj (appearing ill)
- blass adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
- dahinsiechend adj (frequently ill)
Irish
3 entries- galrach adj (frequently ill)
- leice adj (frequently ill)
- meata adj (appearing ill)
Latin
2 entries- aegrotaticius adj (frequently ill)
- morbōsus adj (frequently ill)
Māori
4 entries- aewa adj (frequently ill)
- anuhea adj (frequently ill)
- anuhē adj (frequently ill)
- anuhē adj (not in good health; somewhat sick)
Old English
1 entries- sīcle adj (frequently ill)
Polish
4 entries- chorowity adj (frequently ill)
- chorowity adj (appearing ill)
- schorowany adj (frequently ill)
- wątły adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
Portuguese
4 entries- doentio adj (frequently ill)
- doentio adj (appearing ill)
- débil adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
- enfermiço adj (frequently ill)
Romanian
3 entries- bolnăvicios adj (frequently ill)
- bolnăvicios adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
- slab adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
Russian
2 entries- боле́зненный adj (frequently ill)
- ча́хлый adj (appearing ill)
Spanish
4 entries- achacoso adj (frequently ill)
- calamitoso adj (frequently ill)
- dulzón adj (overly sweet)
- débil adj (lacking intensity or vigour)
Swedish
3 entries- sjuklig adj (frequently ill)
- sjukliga adj (frequently ill)
- sjukligt adj (frequently ill)
Tagalog
1 entries- sakitin adj (frequently ill)
Turkish
1 entries- hastalıklı adj (frequently ill)
Unami
1 entries- palsuwamàlsi adj (appearing ill)
Vietnamese
1 entries- èo uột adj (frequently ill)
Sample sentences
64 total sentences available.
The liquor gave off a sickly odor.
Source: tatoeba (49487)
Tom was a sickly child and was mollycoddled by his parents.
Source: tatoeba (3695122)
A small garden sprinkled over with a scattered eruption of sickly plants separated each of these houses from the street.
Source: tatoeba (6303814)
Showing 4 of 64 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.