1759, Tobias Smollett, letter dated 16 March, 1759, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London: Charles Dilly, 1791, Volume 1, p. 190,
… the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majesty’s service.

… the sharp-scented bottle of crystals that sickly Cousin Bertha had carried to ward off fainting spells.

1782, Samuel Johnson, letter dated 20 March, 1782, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London: Charles Dilly, 1791, Volume 2, p. 419,
The season was dreary, I was sickly, and found the friends sickly whom I went to see.

1850, Charlotte Brontë, letter dated 29 April, 1850, in Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, London: Smith, Elder, 1857, Chapter 6, p. 157,
Papa continues far from well; he is often very sickly in the morning,

Miguel’s temperature was normal that day, though he was still sickly and restless.

… the good wheat on this land had turned sickly and yellow.

With the aid of the marigolds the roses flourished; in the control beds they were sickly and drooping.

1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne and Son, and T. Cadell, Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 9, p. 121,
… she exhibited a countenance so wretched, and a complection so sickly, that Cecilia was impressed with horror at the sight.

… he saw him arrive with his usual florid appearance: had he come pale and sickly, Sandford had been kind to him; but in apparent good health and spirits, he could not form his mouth to tell him he was “glad to see him.”

Yossarian … could not wipe from his mind the excruciating image of the barefoot boy with sickly cheeks …

The Moon grows sickly at the sight of day.

Night, and all her sickly dews,
Her Spectres wan, and Birds of boding cry,

Duncan saw the men through a haze of wire and cigarette smoke and sickly, artificial light;

What man of soul would … run,
Day after day, the still-returning round
Of life’s mean offices, and sickly joys;
But in compassion to mankind?

… my credulous heart
… fondly loves to cherish
The feeble glimmering of a sickly hope.

… I know how you came to despise all that sickly Wagnerian idiocy and bombast.

That he had some sickly compulsion neurosis, they said, was very plain for all eyes to see.

‘Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly?’—‘A scaled and hooded worm.’

He had scanty discouraged hair the color of tow, and a sickly, unpleasant breath.

a. 1768, Laurence Sterne, undated letter in Original Letters, London: Logographic Press, 1788, pp. 110-111,
… if I thought the sentiments of your last letter were not the sentiments of a sickly moment—if I could be made to believe, for an instant, that they proceeded from you, in a sober, reflecting condition of your mind—I should give you over as incurable,

… the three years immediately following the last period … were years so sickly that the births were sunk to 10,229, and the burials raised to 15,068.

Not far it [the water] runs before it finds a plain
In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,
And oft ’tis wont in summer to be sickly.

[…] he sickly guess’d
How lone he was once more, and sadly press’d
His empty arms together […]

For ten brutal minutes he was in torment, then the pain gradually eased. He felt sickly limp but relieved, thankful for his good health.

The creaseless horizontal face of the giant smiled sickly, leering.

Thy Drudge contrives, and in our full career
Sicklies our hopes with the pale hue of Fear;

[…]a cancer gnawing at the root of happiness, defeating every aim at permanent good in this world, and sicklying all sublunary joys[…]

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[…]

Ockham was critical of so many of his fellows for sicklying over theology with the obscurities of philosophy.

1889, Samuel Cox, An Expositor’s Notebook, London: Richard D. Dickinson, 7th edition, Chapter 26, p. 364,
But the seven most prominent Apostles […] still hang together, their hearts tormented with eager yet sad questionings, their hopes fast sicklying over with the pale hues of doubt.

Sickly

Meaning

Adj

Verb

Adv

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