Meanings
plural sick calls
- The opportunity that allows prisoners to request medical attention.
Ten prisons have sick call twice a day and three handle such complaints three times a day .
1940, Wayne Lyman Morse, The Attorney General's Survey of Release Procedures1 more example
In the health care system in corrections, periodically we will find people who will want to go to sick call, and correctional officers will say, "You just want to goof off, you don't need medical care." In the correctional setting we need that kind of [serological] information so that this person can go to sick call without having a confrontation with the local officer.
1985 December 7, Christine Guilfoy, Bailus Walker, “Quarantine Is No Way To Fight AIDS”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 21, page 9
Synonyms & antonyms
nounthe daily military formation at which individuals report to the medical officer as sick
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
sick call. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sick%20call
“sick call.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sick%20call. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sick call,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sick%20call.
Source: sick call on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.