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Sickly vs Wizened - What's the difference?

sickly | wizened | Related terms |

As adjectives the difference between sickly and wizened

is that sickly is frequently ill; often in poor health; given to becoming ill while wizened is withered; lean and wrinkled by shrinkage as from age or illness.

As verbs the difference between sickly and wizened

is that sickly is to make sickly while wizened is past tense of wizen.

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.

    wizened

    English

    Verb

    (head)
  • (wizen)

    • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Withered; lean and wrinkled by shrinkage as from age or illness.
  • * 1816 , , Old Mortality , ch. 8:
    • "Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper. . . "If it hadna been that I am mair than half a gentlewoman by my station, I wad hae tried my ten nails in the wizen'd hide o' her!"
  • * 1907 , , Before Adam , ch. 7:
    • He was old, too, wizened with age, and the hair on his face was gray.
  • * 2010 May 13, , " Cannes: Best-Ever Film by a 101-Year-Old Man," Time (retrieved 5 Oct 2013):
    • In the simple fable about old age reconciling itself to memory and destiny, Mastroianni wears the wizened smile of a man who knows he is visiting his youth for the last time.