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Sickly vs Valetudinary - What's the difference?

sickly | valetudinary |

As adjectives the difference between sickly and valetudinary

is that sickly is frequently ill; often in poor health; given to becoming ill while valetudinary is (obsolete) sickly, infirm, valetudinarian.

As a verb sickly

is to make sickly.

As an adverb sickly

is in a sick manner.

sickly

English

Adjective

(er)
  • Frequently ill; often in poor health; given to becoming ill.
    • a sickly child
  • Having the appearance of sickness or ill health; appearing ill, infirm or unhealthy; pale.
    • a sickly plant
  • * Dryden
    • The moon grows sickly at the sight of day.
  • Weak; faint; suggesting unhappiness.
    • a sickly smile
  • Somewhat sick; disposed to illness; attended with disease.
  • * Shakespeare
    • This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
  • Tending to produce disease.
    • a sickly''' autumn; a '''sickly climate
    (Cowper)
  • Tending to produce nausea; sickening.
    • a sickly''' smell; '''sickly sentimentality

    Related terms

    * sickliness

    Verb

  • To make sickly.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
  • * 1840 , S. M. Heaton, George Heaton, Thoughts on the Litany, by a naval officer's orphan daughter (page 58)
  • * 1871 , Gail Hamilton, Country living and country thinking (page 109)
    • He evidently thinks the sweet little innocents never heard or thought of such a thing before, and would go on burying their curly heads in books, and sicklying their rosy faces with "the pale cast of thought" till the end of time

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • In a sick manner.
  • * 2010 , Rowan Somerville, The End of Sleep (page 66)
    • The creaseless horizontal face of the giant smiled sickly , leering.

    valetudinary

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) sickly, infirm, valetudinarian
  • *{{quote-book, year=1727, author=Thomas Carlyle, title=History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.), chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage="His Majesty began to become valetudinary ; and the hypochondria which tormented him rendered his humor very melancholy. }}
  • *{{quote-book, year=1887, author=Edmund Burke, title=The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=It produces a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other. }}

    Derived terms

    * valetudinariness