Ill
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ɪl/
- Rhymes: -ɪl
Origin
Middle English ille ‘evil, wicked’, from Old Norse illr (adj.), illa (adv.), ilt (noun) (whence Danish ilde), from Proto-Germanic *elhilaz, from Proto-Indo-European *hâ‚elḱ- (whence Latin ulcus ‘sore’, Ancient Greek hélkos ‘wound, ulcer’, Sanskrit árÅ›as ‘hemorrhoids’).
Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, s.v. "ulcus" (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 637.
Full definition of ill
Adjective
ill
- (obsolete) Evil; wicked (of people). 13th-19th c.
- Francis Atterbury (1663-1732)St. Paul chose to magnify his office when ill men conspired to lessen it.
- (archaic) Morally reprehensible (of behaviour etc.); blameworthy. from 13th c.
- 1999, George RR Martin, A Clash of Kings, Bantam 2011, p. 2:‘Go bring her. It is ill to keep a lady waiting.’
- Indicative of unkind or malevolent intentions; harsh, cruel. from 14th c.He suffered from ill treatment.
- Unpropitious, unkind, faulty, not up to reasonable standard.ill manners; ill will
- 1959, Georgette Heyer, The Unknown Ajax Chapter 1, ...his lordship was out of humour. That was the way Chollacombe described as knaggy an old gager as ever Charles had had the ill-fortune to serve. Stiff-rumped, that's what he was, always rubbing the rust, or riding grub, like he had been for months past.
- Unwell in terms of health or physical condition; sick. from 15th c.I've been ill with the flu for the past few days.
- Having an urge to vomit. from 20th c.Seeing those pictures made me ill.
- (hip-hop slang) Sublime, with the connotation of being so in a singularly creative way. sense sometimes declines in AAVE as ill, comparative iller, superlative illest.
- 1994, Biggie Smalls, The WhatBiggie Smalls is the illest
Your style is played out, like Arnold wonderin "Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?" - (slang) Extremely bad (bad enough to make one ill). Generally used indirectly with to be.That band was ill.
Usage notes
The comparative forms iller and illest are used in American English, but less than one fourth as frequently as the "more" and "most" forms.
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Adverb
ill
- Not well; imperfectly, badly; hardly.
- Schuster Hepaticae V|3In both groups, however, we find copious and intricate speciation so that, often, species limits are narrow and ill defined.
- 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus 2010, p. 541:His inflexibility and blindness ill become a leader, for a leader must temper justice with mercy.
- 2006, Julia Borossa (translator), Monique Canto-Sperber (quoted author), in Libération, 2002 February 2, quoted in (quoting author), Dead End Feminism, Polity, ISBN 9780745633800, page 40:Is it because this supposes an undifferentiated violence towards others and oneself that I could ill imagine in a woman?
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Noun
ill
(plural ills)- (often pluralized) Trouble; distress; misfortune; adversity.
- William ShakespeareThat makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of. - 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 4, Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.
- Music won't solve all the world's ills, but it can make them easier to bear.
- Harm or injury.I wouldn't want you to do me ill.
- Evil; moral wrongfulness.
- John DrydenStrong virtue, like strong nature, struggles still,
Exerts itself, and then throws off the ill. - A physical ailment; an illness.I am incapacitated by rheumatism and other ills.
- Unfavorable remarks or opinions.Do not speak ill of the dead.
- (US, slang) PCP, phencyclidine.