sickly (sikli)

[ Ywis thou nedeles Conseylest me that sikliche I me feyne, For I am sik in ernest, douteles. Chaucer, Troilus, ii. 1528. She was sickly from her childhood until about the age of fifteen. Swift , Death of Stella. While he lay recovering there, his wife Bore him another son, a sickly one. Tennyson, Enoch Arden. 2. Pertaining to or arising from a state of impaired health; characteristic of an unhealthy condition: as, a sickly complexion; the sickly look of a person, an animal, or a tree. And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the Bret Harte, Society upon the Stanislaus. floor. 3t. Pertaining to sickne or the sick; suitable for a sick person. Give me my Gowne and Cap, though, and set mee charily in my sickly chaire. Brome, The Sparagus Garden, iv. 6. When on my sickly couch I lay, Impatient both of night and day,... Then Stella ran to my relief. Swift , To Stella visiting him in his Sickne . was holdun. Of our soul's sickne es , which are sins. His sickne es from his chair. Donne, Letters, xxvii. made it nece ary for him not to stir Bp . Fell , Hammond. 3. A derangement or disturbance of the stomach, manifesting itself in nausea, retching, and side Both are common Nile birds of similar habits, and enough alike to be uncritically confounded. See cuts under Plu vianus and spur-winged.