Literary notes about sickly (AI summary)
The term "sickly" is employed in literature to evoke images and moods of frailty, decay, and unease. Writers frequently use it to characterize physical appearances, such as pale, infirm faces or weak, emaciated bodies ([1], [2], [3]), while also extending its reach metaphorically to describe atmospheres—be it a dismal, unnatural light or a pervasive sense of morbidity ([4], [5]). In some works, it underscores the emotional and psychological state of characters, hinting at a subtle but constant undercurrent of dread, awkwardness, or melancholy ([6], [7]). Even in descriptions of nature or in abstract commentary, "sickly" helps illustrate a decline in vigor or a corruption of what might otherwise be considered pure or vibrant ([8], [9]). Overall, the word consistently enhances the portrayal of deterioration, whether in physical form, in the ambiance, or within the inner life of characters.
- ‘I recollect getting three young milliners to sit to me, when I first began to paint, and I remember that they were all very pale and sickly.’
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - Chapter V. Elders Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - His father had died when he was six years old, and little Tim was left a sickly emaciated infant whom no one expected to live many months.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
— from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the houses, and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells - I had a sickly dread, too, of being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the conventional in everything external.
— from White Nights and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - At last, with a sigh of annoyance, he said to himself that it was nothing but his own cursed sickly suspicion.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Not far it runs before it finds a plain In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, And oft 'tis wont in summer to be sickly.
— from Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell by Dante Alighieri - This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
— from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare
