Dictionary Definition
ill adj
1 not in good physical or mental health; "ill
from the monotony of his suffering" [syn: sick] [ant: well]
2 resulting in suffering or adversity; "ill
effects"; "it's an ill wind that blows no good"
3 distressing; "ill manners"; "of ill
repute"
4 indicating hostility or enmity; "you certainly
did me an ill turn"; "ill feelings"; "ill will"
5 presaging ill-fortune; "ill omens"; "ill
predictions"; "my words with inauspicious thunderings shook
heaven"- P.B.Shelley; "a dead and ominous silence prevailed"; "a
by-election at a time highly unpropitious for the Government" [syn:
inauspicious,
ominous] n : an often
persistent bodily disorder or disease; a cause for complaining
[syn: ailment, complaint] adv
1 (`ill' is often used as a combining form) in a
poor or improper or unsatisfactory manner; not well; "he was ill
prepared"; "it ill befits a man to betray old friends"; "the car
runs badly"; "he performed badly on the exam"; "the team played
poorly"; "ill-fitting clothes"; "an ill-conceived plan" [syn:
badly, poorly] [ant: well]
2 unfavorably or with disapproval; "tried not to
speak ill of the dead"; "thought badly of him for his lack of
concern" [syn: badly]
[ant: well]
3 with difficulty or inconvenience; scarcely or
hardly; "we can ill afford to buy a new car just now"
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- /ɪl/
- Rhymes with: -ɪl
Adjective
- Suffering from a disease.
- I've been ill with the flu for the past few days.
- Having an urge to vomit.
- Seeing those pictures made me ill.
- Bad, often connoting
abuse or neglect.
- He suffered from ill treatment.
- In the context of "hip-hop slang": Sublime, with the connotation of
being so in a singularly creative way. [This sense
sometimes declines in AAVE as ill, comparative iller, superlative illest.]
- Biggie Smalls is the illest / Your style is played out, like Arnold wonderin "Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?" — Biggie Smalls, The What, 1994.
- Extremely bad (bad enough to make one ill). Generally used
indirectly with to be.
- That band was ill.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Derived terms
Translations
suffering from a disease
having an urge to vomit
- Dutch: misselijk
- French: écœuré, écœurée
- German: übel
- Spanish: mal, mareado
- Swedish: illamående
bad
- Danish: dårlig
- French: mauvais, mauvaise
- German: übel
- Polish: zły
- Swedish: illa
- Turkish: kötü
in hip-hop slang: sublime
Translations to be checked
Adverb
- Badly; very incompletely. Often hyphenated to form an
adjectival phrase.
- That move was ill-planned and ill-executed.
Antonyms
Derived terms
Translations
badly
- French: mal
- Polish: źle
- Spanish: mal
Noun
- In the context of "often pluralized": Trouble; distress; misfortune; adversity.
- 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.
- Sociopaths do not seem to grasp the difference between good and 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.
Derived terms
Translations
a problem
- German: Übel
- Polish: problem
something damaging
- Polish: krzywda
References
- Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.
- Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary, 1987-1996.
Extensive Definition
- Not to be confused with the Roman number III.
Ill (ill) may refer to:
- to suffer from an illness or disease
- a phrase used in common youth culture
- Ill (Austria), a river in western Austria
- Ill (France), a river in north-eastern France
- Illinois, often abbreviated Ill.
ILL may stand for:
- Institut Laue-Langevin, a scientific research facility in Grenoble, France
- Interlibrary loan, a service offered by libraries that wish to share their materials
- Institute of Linguists (London)
ill in Tosk Albanian: Ill
ill in German: Ill
ill in French: Ill (homonymie)
ill in Hebrew: ייל
ill in Italian: ILL
ill in Japanese: ILL (曖昧さ回避)
ill in Dutch: Ill
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
abomination, affection, ailing, ailment, amiss, apocalyptic, atrocity, bad, badly, baleful, bane, baneful, befoulment, below par,
black, blight, bodeful, boding, complaint, condition, corruption, criminal, critically ill,
crying evil, damage,
damaging, dark, defilement, deleterious, despoliation, destruction, detriment, detrimental, dire, disadvantageously,
disagreeable,
disagreeably,
discourteous,
disease, disorder, disrespectful, doomful, down, dreary, evil, evil-starred, evilly, faint, faintish, fateful, feeling awful, feeling
faint, feeling something terrible, foreboding, gloomy, grievance, harm, havoc, hurt, hurtful, ill-boding, ill-bred,
ill-fated, ill-mannered, ill-omened, ill-starred, impertinent, impolite, improper, in danger, inaccurate, inauspicious, incline, inconveniently, indisposed, inexpedient, infection, inferior, infirmity, inhospitable, inhospitably, inimical, injurious, injury, invalid, laid low, lowering, malady, malevolent, menacing, mischief, mortally ill, not
quite right, of evil portent, off-color, ominous, out of sorts, outrage, peccant, poison, pollution, portending, portentous, rocky, rude, seedy, sick, sick unto death, sickish, sickness, sinful, sinister, somber, syndrome, taken ill, the worst,
threatening,
toxin, unadvantageously,
unaffectionate,
unaffectionately,
unamiable, unamiably, unbenign, unbenignant, unbenignantly, unbenignly, uncompassionate,
uncompassionately,
uncompassioned,
uncordial, uncordially, under the
weather, unfavorable, unfortunate, unfriendly, ungenial, ungenially, ungracious, ungraciously, unhandily, unhealthy, unkind, unkindly, unloving, unlovingly, unlucky, unpleasant, unprofitably, unpromising, unpropitious, unrewardingly, unskillful, unsympathetic, unsympathetically,
unsympathizing,
untoward, unwell, uselessly, venom, vexation, vicious, wicked, with difficulty, woe, wrong, wrongly