How to Use sickly in a Sentence

sickly

1 of 2 adjective

• The lamp gave off a sickly glow.
• The walls were painted a sickly yellow.
• As a child, Dad was small and sickly and shy to a fault.
  — Dallas News, 1 Dec. 2022
• His first glance was the frown of the man; the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue.
  — Washington Post, 3 Sep. 2021
• This is not made up or in the minds of people who are sickly.
  — Meghan O'Rourke, The Atlantic, 8 Mar. 2021
• The youngest, Mark, was the sickly boy who inspired his mom to bake whole-wheat bread.
  — Fox News, 24 June 2022
• One of our sickly little birds lands on Mr. Frame and gives him a peck.
  — George Saunders, The New Yorker, 2 Nov. 2020
• Covid isn’t fatal, the tests are a sham, and says Kuzma was just a sickly man.
  — Sam Kestenbaum, Rolling Stone, 17 Sep. 2022
• Beneath its spines the skin wrinkled and stayed a sickly green.
  — Jackie Polzin, Star Tribune, 6 July 2021
• There can be a sort of sickly, sweet chemical type of smell and taste.
  — Sandee Lamotte, CNN, 1 Oct. 2022
• Camera feeds near the Fawn fire showed sickly orange-gray smoke rolling across the sky.
  — Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, 24 Sep. 2021
• When this happens, your shrub’s leaves look pale or sickly and may even drop off.
  — oregonlive, 18 Dec. 2022
• The sickly, plastic smell still lingers inside and clings to the creek, Sulphur Run, a few feet from her door.
  — Emily Cochrane, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2023
• But that was as sickly as the Bills' offense has looked since the second half of the Pittsburgh game on opening day.
  — Sal Maiorana, USA TODAY, 1 Nov. 2021
• The dog is unable to be shown, will not be able to be bred is likely to remain sickly, the complaint said.
  — Cathy Kozlowicz, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 31 Oct. 2019
• Drink a big cup full of sickly-sweet liquid, get your blood tested.
  — Anna Claire Vollers | [e-mail], al, 26 Mar. 2020
• Through those fake holes in the sickly wallpaper are glimpses of dark skies twinkling with stars.
  — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 20 Oct. 2023
• By mid-summer, the air was perfumed with ripe apricots and the sickly sweetness of the fallen fruits.
  — Grace Hwang Lynch, SFChronicle.com, 31 Oct. 2019
• There was a sickly little orange one with a head that wobbled back and forth.
  — Kathryn Scanlan, Harper’s Magazine , 20 July 2022
• The fine dust turned the surface of the sea the colour of butter and left a bright, lemony line on shore that marked the extent of high tide and gave off a sickly sweet smell.
  — The Economist, 4 July 2019
• The glow of the screen cast a sickly pallor on his gaunt face, highlighting the shadows beneath his eyes.
  — Adi Robertson, The Verge, 24 May 2023
• But Highlands’ eggnog isn’t of the thick and sickly sweet variety that comes from a carton.
  — al, 12 Dec. 2019
• Best of all is the scent—like an array of roses instead of strong, sickly acetone.
  — Tiffany Dodson, SELF, 18 Mar. 2021
• The taste: Despite the visible vanilla bean flecks, the flavor was sickly and fake.
  — Ali Francis, Bon Appétit, 29 Aug. 2022
• The smoke had covered the Bay Area for weeks—white, then yellow, like teargas, then crimson, then a sickly pink.
  — Dave Eggers, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2020
• It is not lost on me that rebel white folks remain the reason for such a sickly America.
  — Ida Harris, Essence, 21 Dec. 2020
• Natalia Zhdanova, 40, found Fedya as a weak and sickly stray in her backyard when the cat was just a few days old.
  — People Staff, PEOPLE.com, 28 Sep. 2021
• The clarinet then falls silent, yet the sonority retains a sickly air.
  — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 30 Nov. 2022
• The couple disregard the advice, and the woman gives birth to a sickly infant.
  — Audrey Farley, The Atlantic, 15 July 2019
• Near the end, yellowed skin and a bloated body put the often silent, slow-moving disease on sickly display.
  — Ben Tanen, Washington Post, 8 Feb. 2024

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sickly

2 of 2 adverb

• Much of the new landscape looked rather sickly then and now.
  — oregonlive, 26 Jan. 2023
• Did the sickly-sweet chocolates at the end come from Russell Stover?
  — Dallas News, 14 Apr. 2022
• And maybe the spice that keeps it from becoming too sickly sweet.
  — Matt Brennan, Los Angeles Times, 22 Dec. 2021
• At the same time that greasy stain is climbing up the side of the Peep, that sickly Peep flavor is seeping out across the pizza.
  — al, 4 Apr. 2021
• Still, Shopsin resists the urge to veer sickly-sweet in her nostalgia.
  — Wired Staff, Wired, 26 Nov. 2021
• The plants get seven hours of sunlight, but the leaves are really sickly looking.
  — Neil Sperry, San Antonio Express-News, 10 Sep. 2021
• And pretty soon the penguins could be looking kinda sickly.
  — Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2020
• Instead of sickly-sweet root beer, pour a bold, smooth, and complex All Out Extra Dark over a glass of rich and creamy ice cream (non-dairy versions work too) for an ice-cream float with a bite.
  — Outside Online, 9 Nov. 2022
• However, the rose in this hair oil isn't sickly sweet, and actually smells like the real thing, not a chemical copy.
  — Tatjana Freund, Marie Claire, 26 Aug. 2020
• The artist Samara Golden has spent months painting guts — lurid, swollen, sinuous forms in bloody red, purplish-blue or a sickly yellow.
  — Jacqui Palumbo, CNN, 8 Dec. 2022
• Based on the color of Jones’ rental cars, the Grinch was now a sickly green one, and soon would be a mean one, as Seuss took all his rhyming talents to the songs necessary to flesh out the original source material.
  — Patrick Sauer, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Dec. 2020
• The new Kohler Peachblow fixtures are warm and playful without being too sickly sweet—especially when paired with the brown, taupe, gray, and beige hues that are trending now for bathrooms.
  — Hollyanna McCollom, Better Homes & Gardens, 2 Feb. 2023
• Even just a couple dashes of bitters can be the difference between something sickly sweet and a drink that’s perfectly balanced.
  — Eric Betz, Discover Magazine, 7 Oct. 2020
• The cliche is that cider is sickly sweet and with a high alcohol level — but Scion’s selection includes draft ciders that range from 4 to 12% ABV, and the flavor profiles range from extremely dry and tannic to tart to herbal to sweet.
  — Stefene Russell, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 Jan. 2023
• The pastel indie-pop serenade is imbued with Night’s sickly sweet romantic lyrics.
  — Grace Ann Natanawan, SPIN, 4 Mar. 2022
• Without missing a beat, Trump adjourned from that announcement to stage a sickly exploitative bible-brandishing photo-op in front of a Washington, DC, church damaged in the protests.
  — Linda Tirado, The New Republic, 4 June 2020
• Playful, almost sickly, hues of baby blue, bubblegum pink, and banana yellow tie things up in a funny little millennial bow.
  — Camille Okhio, ELLE Decor, 30 Nov. 2022
• Still sickly five days after testing positive, Trevino says she was pressured to return to work without a negative test result.
  — NBC News, 10 Feb. 2022
• Even here, in the country’s second-oldest national park, the horizon is the sickly yellow of a cigarette butt, a vaporous mixture of Central Valley smog and forest fire smoke from the myriad infernos burning across the state.
  — Thayer Walker, Scientific American, 29 Dec. 2016
• Parents, pastors, and other moral leaders were sickly invested in feminist misery.
  — Audrey Clare Farley, The New Republic, 4 May 2023
• In Platt’s highly physical interpretation, he is scrunched and sickly looking, as if literally oppressed by the gentile society around him.
  — Jesse Green, New York Times, 16 Mar. 2023
• Typically, these bottles are sickly sweet and hangover inducing.
  — Kate Dingwall, Forbes, 31 July 2022
• Unfortunately, the film hinders its star, Paul Bettany, by keeping him sickly and homebound, mired in melodramatic worry over the religious implications of his great notion: evolution.
  — Andrew Moseman, Discover Magazine, 28 Dec. 2010
• Always sickly and often overworked, her father died while processing his family’s final immigration paperwork.
  — Susan Dunne, courant.com, 12 Dec. 2021
• Much of the new landscape looked rather sickly then and now.
  — oregonlive, 26 Jan. 2023
• Did the sickly-sweet chocolates at the end come from Russell Stover?
  — Dallas News, 14 Apr. 2022
• And maybe the spice that keeps it from becoming too sickly sweet.
  — Matt Brennan, Los Angeles Times, 22 Dec. 2021
• At the same time that greasy stain is climbing up the side of the Peep, that sickly Peep flavor is seeping out across the pizza.
  — al, 4 Apr. 2021
• Still, Shopsin resists the urge to veer sickly-sweet in her nostalgia.
  — Wired Staff, Wired, 26 Nov. 2021
• The plants get seven hours of sunlight, but the leaves are really sickly looking.
  — Neil Sperry, San Antonio Express-News, 10 Sep. 2021

Last Updated: 5 Sep 2024