Ill vs Little - What's the difference?
ill | little |
(label) Evil; wicked (of people).
* (Francis Atterbury) (1663-1732)
(label) Morally reprehensible (of behaviour etc.); blameworthy.
* 1999 , (George RR Martin), A Clash of Kings , Bantam 2011, p. 2:
Indicative of unkind or malevolent intentions; harsh, cruel.
Unpropitious, unkind, faulty, not up to reasonable standard.
*{{quote-book, year=1959, author=(Georgette Heyer), title=(The Unknown Ajax), chapter=1
, passage=
Unwell in terms of health or physical condition; sick.
Having an urge to vomit.
(label) Sublime, with the connotation of being so in a singularly creative way. [This sense sometimes declines in AAVE as ill', ''comparative'' '''iller''', ''superlative'' ' illest .]
* 1994 , Biggie Smalls, The What
(label) Extremely bad (bad enough to make one ill). Generally used indirectly with to be .
Not well; imperfectly, badly; hardly.
*
* 1994 , Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom , Abacus 2010, p. 541:
* 2006 , Julia Borossa (translator), Monique Canto-Sperber (quoted author), in (quoting author), ''Dead End Feminism , Polity, ISBN 9780745633800,
(often pluralized) Trouble; distress; misfortune; adversity.
* (William Shakespeare)
* , chapter=4
, title= Harm or injury.
Evil; moral wrongfulness.
* (John Dryden)
A physical ailment; an illness.
Unfavorable remarks or opinions.
(US, slang) PCP, phencyclidine.
Small in size.
Insignificant, trivial.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=
, volume=189, issue=2, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= Very young.
(of a sibling) Younger.
* 1871 October 18, The One-eyed Philosopher [pseudonym], "Street Corners", in Judy: or the London serio-comic journal , volume 9, page 255 [http://books.google.com/books?id=_B4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA255]:
* 2004 , Barry Miles, Zappa: A Biography , 2005 edition, ISBN 080214215X, page 5:
Small in amount or number, having few members.
Short in duration; brief.
Small in extent of views or sympathies; narrow; shallow; contracted; mean; illiberal; ungenerous.
* Tennyson
Not much.
:
*
*:Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.
Not at all.
:
*
*:But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at them.
*{{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 13, author=Alistair Magowan, work=BBC Sport
, title= Not much, only a little: only a small amount (of).
As adjectives the difference between ill and little
is that ill is evil; wicked (of people) while little is small in size.As adverbs the difference between ill and little
is that ill is not well; imperfectly, badly; hardly while little is not much.As a noun ill
is trouble; distress; misfortune; adversity.As a determiner little is
not much, only a little: only a small amount (of).As a proper noun Little is
{{surname}.ill
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- St. Paul chose to magnify his office when ill men conspired to lessen it.
- ‘Go bring her. It is ill to keep a lady waiting.’
- Biggie Smalls is the illest / Your style is played out, like Arnold wonderin "Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?"
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.Synonyms
* (suffering from a disease''): diseased, poorly (''UK ), sick, under the weather (informal), unwell * (having an urge to vomit ): disgusted, nauseated, nauseous, sick, sickened * (bad ): bad, mal- * (in hip-hop slang: sublime ): dope * See alsoAntonyms
* (suffering from a disease ): fine, hale, healthy, in good health, well * (having an urge to vomit ): * (bad ): good * (in hip-hop slang: sublime ): wackDerived terms
* be ill * fall ill * ill at ease * ill effects * illness * ill wind * lie ill in one's mouth * mentally ill * be taken illReferences
Adverb
(en adverb)- In both groups, however, we find copious and intricate speciation so that, often, species limits are narrow and ill defined.
- His inflexibility and blindness ill become a leader, for a leader must temper justice with mercy.
page 40:
- Is it because this supposes an undifferentiated violence towards others and oneself that I could ill imagine in a woman?
Synonyms
* illyAntonyms
* wellDerived terms
* bode ill * ill afford * ill-formed * ill-gotten * ill-thought-outNoun
(en noun)- That makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of.
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=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.}}
- Strong virtue, like strong nature, struggles still, / Exerts itself, and then throws off the ill .
Derived terms
* for good or illReferences
* Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989. * Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary , 1987-1996.Statistics
*Anagrams
* ----little
English
(wikipedia little)Adjective
Chico Harlan
Japan pockets the subsidy …, passage=Across Japan, technology companies and private investors are racing to install devices that until recently they had little interest in: solar panels. Massive solar parks are popping up as part of a rapid build-up that one developer likened to an "explosion."}}
- If you want to find Little' France, take any turning on the north side of Leicester square, and wander in a zigzag fashion Oxford Streetwards. The ' Little is rather smokier and more squalid than the Great France upon the other side of the Manche.
- In the forties, hurdy-gurdy men could still be heard in all those East Coast cities with strong Italian neighbourhoods: New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. A visit to Baltimore's Little Italy at that time was like a trip to Italy itself.
- a little sleep
- The long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise, / Because their natures are little .
Usage notes
Some authorities regard both littler' and '''littlest''' as non-standard. The OED says of the word little: "''the adjective has no recognized mode of comparison. The difficulty is commonly evaded by resort to a synonym (as smaller, smallest); some writers have ventured to employ the unrecognized forms littler, littlest, which are otherwise confined to dialect or imitations of childish or illiterate speech.''" The forms '''lesser''' and ' least are encountered in animal names such as lesser flamingo and least weasel.Antonyms
* (small) large, big * (young) big * (younger) bigAdverb
Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd, passage=But as United saw the game out, little did they know that, having looked likely to win their 13th Premier League title, it was City who turned the table to snatch glory from their arch-rivals' grasp.}}
Antonyms
* muchDeterminer
- There is little water left.
- We had very little to do.