Etymology

sick

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Today it means: In poor health; ill. Full definition →

Middle English sik ← Old English sēc ← Proto-West Germanic *seuk
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sick · adjective, noun, verb1

  1. Proto-Germanic*seukaną
  2. Proto-Germanic*seukaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic*seuk
  4. Old Englishsēoc
  5. Old Englishsēc
  6. Middle Englishsik
  7. English todaysick

From Middle English sik, sike, seek, seke, seok, from Old English sēoc (“sick, ill”), from Proto-West Germanic *seuk, from Proto-Germanic *seukaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sewg- (“to be troubled or grieved”). See also West Frisian siik, Dutch ziek, German siech, Norwegian Bokmål syk, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish sjuk, Danish syg; also Middle Irish socht (“silence, depression”), Old Armenian հիւծանիմ (hiwcanim, “to be weakening”). The "very good, excellent" sense is an ameliorative semantic shift from the original sense of "in poor health". Compare similar semantic development in terrific and wicked.

sick · verb2

  1. Englishseek
  2. Englishsic
  3. English todaysick

Variant of sic, itself an alteration of seek.

Sick · proper noun3

  1. Hungarian · derived fromszűcs“furrier”
  2. Serbo-Croatian · derived fromŠic
  3. English todaySick

* As a Dutch and German surname, shortened from names like Siegfried, Siegmund and similar. Compare Sieck, Zeek. * As a Czech surname, Americanized from Šik; also Slovene, Carpathian Rusyn, and Serbo-Croatian Šic, converged from several origins such as síč (“sower”), the source of Schuetz, or Slavicized from Hungarian szűcs (“furrier”). Compare Shick.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.