How to Use sicken in a Sentence

sicken

verb
  • Many people sickened and died on the long voyage.
  • The bacteria in the drinking water sickened the whole village.
  • We were sickened by the reports of violence.
  • Among the 14 states listed on the CDC’s map, Ohio has 11 sickened, the most of the outbreak.
    Susan Selasky, Detroit Free Press, 5 Jan. 2024
  • The helplessness of the young victims and the savagery of the attack sickened France.
    John Leicester, Anchorage Daily News, 8 June 2023
  • The prison guards brought her a milky porridge with a piece of oily fish that sickened her.
    J Wortham, New York Times, 2 May 2024
  • One way to reduce the number of birds at your feeders is to sicken them.
    Jim Williams, Star Tribune, 2 Feb. 2021
  • The lake stinks, and signs go up warning that the toxic sludge can sicken children and kill pets.
    Emma Marris, The Atlantic, 5 June 2021
  • So far, three farmworkers have been sickened in the U.S., one in Texas and two in Michigan.
    Mary Kekatos, ABC News, 5 June 2024
  • The Missouri patient was the 14th person in the U.S. sickened with bird flu since March, when the virus was detected in cows.
    Lindsey Leake, Fortune Well, 12 Sep. 2024
  • An oil spill in 2018 caused a fire that killed five people and sickened hundreds in the port city of Balikpapan.
    Achmad Ibrahim, ajc, 3 Mar. 2023
  • And the new virus — which has killed more than 1,000 people and sickened tens of thousands — has emerged as an economic wild card.
    BostonGlobe.com, 11 Feb. 2020
  • Two farmworkers at dairies in Michigan and Texas were sickened by bird flu this spring.
    Josh Funk, Fortune, 25 May 2024
  • At that moment — and for many months after — the idea of wrestling again sickened the Elmhurst College graduate.
    Stacy St. Clair, Chicago Tribune, 5 May 2024
  • All of the people sickened were hospitalized, and three have died.
    Maya Davis, CNN, 8 Aug. 2024
  • The viruses best adapted to humans have co-evolved over millions of years to infect but rarely sicken us.
    Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 7 Apr. 2021
  • Despite having the power to sicken, there are few laws in the United States to regulate odor.
    New York Times, 13 Jan. 2022
  • About a quarter of those sickened in San Antonio are people in their 40s.
    Peggy O’Hare, ExpressNews.com, 27 Mar. 2020
  • Although the disease is not known to sicken humans, some scientists fear that could change.
    Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2022
  • Most of the viruses that fall into the bird-flu category do not sicken humans.
    oregonlive, 18 May 2022
  • Thousands of students said they were sickened by noxious fumes in the incidents.
    Bradford Betz, Fox News, 4 June 2023
  • Pets can eat a small amount of unseasoned turkey without the skin but should not be given table scraps since the salt, fat, and bones can sicken pets.
    Ingrid Vasquez, Peoplemag, 23 Nov. 2022
  • Daily Harvest has not yet specified what caused the tara flour to sicken people.
    Daniella Silva, NBC News, 21 July 2022
  • The goal is to slow the virus’ spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals with those sickened by an illness that no one in the world has immunity to.
    Andrew Taylor, Washington Post, 13 Mar. 2020
  • The tests only sample a small part of each crop, so mold may grow undetected and may sicken those who eat it or inhale its spores.
    Robert McCoppin, chicagotribune.com, 1 Jan. 2022
  • He's seen the scores of New Mexicans and tribal members sickened since Trinity, the code name for the first nuclear test in 1945.
    Claudia Grisales, NPR, 6 May 2024
  • Experts say the rush to move them back to shelters, combined with the lack of air-quality upgrades, is likely to sicken and kill people.
    Kevin T. Dugan, Curbed, 16 Aug. 2021
  • The virus can sicken otherwise healthy infants and cause pneumonia and inflammation of the small airways in the lungs.
    Emily Alpert Reyes, Los Angeles Times, 13 Dec. 2023
  • By Wednesday, the coronavirus had sickened more than forty thousand people there and killed more than a thousand.
    Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 12 Feb. 2020
  • This is the 14th person in the U.S. sickened with bird flu since March, when the virus was detected in cows, after infecting wild birds and mammals worldwide.
    CBS News, 6 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sicken.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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