Sickness

How to spell sickness

8 letters · 2 syllables

1 of the 35 people asked to spell sickness in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce sickness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sickness mean?

1. nounThe state of being ill or unwell in body or mind.

Sickness in a sentence

• A sudden sickness kept her away from the office for a week.

• The company offers full pay during sickness and recovery.

Where does sickness come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, built from the adjective 'sick' and the abstract-noun suffix '-ness'. The root 'sick' descends from the Old English seoc, meaning 'ill' or 'unwell', which goes back to a common Germanic ancestor shared with the Dutch ziek and the German siech. The suffix '-ness' is equally Old English (nes or nis) and was attached freely to adjectives to name the quality or state they describe, much as it still works in 'kindness' and 'darkness'. The combined form seocnes is recorded well before the Norman Conquest, so 'sickness' has meant a state of illness for well over a thousand years. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: the c and k together represent a single sound, and the doubled ss of '-ness' can be miscounted, but the parts themselves are very familiar.

How the word is built

• sick (from Old English seoc: ill, unwell)
• -ness (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or condition)