Sickening

How to spell sickening

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sickening

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sickening mean?

1. adjectiveCausing disgust, revulsion, or strong dismay.
2. verbPresent participle of sicken: starting to become ill or making someone ill.

Sickening in a sentence

• adjective

  The constant swaying of the small boat was sickening after an hour.

• verb

  Half the office was sickening with the same winter virus.

• adjective

  A sickening smell of rotten food filled the kitchen.

• verb

  The children were clearly sickening for something by the weekend.

Where does sickening come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The core of this word is the Old English adjective 'seoc', meaning ill or unwell, which has cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch 'ziek' and German 'krank' relatives. To this base English added the suffix '-en', a productive ending that turns an adjective into a verb of becoming or making, so 'sicken' originally meant 'to make ill' or 'to become ill'. Adding the participle ending '-ing' produced 'sickening', recorded from the late medieval period in its literal sense of falling ill. From the 1600s onward the word broadened figuratively to describe anything that makes the stomach turn, whether through disgust, horror, or dread. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle syllable, the schwa in 'sick-EN-ing', which writers can be tempted to drop, and the single 'n' (not doubled) before the '-ing'.

How the word is built

• sick (from Old English seoc: ill)
• -en (suffix forming a verb meaning 'to make or become')
• -ing (present participle/adjective suffix)