Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Sure; certain; assured; secure; firm; safe.
- Certainly; indeed; surely; firmly; securely; confidently; safely.
- To secure; assure; make certain or safe; plight; betroth.
Wiktionary
- adj. comparative form of sick: more sick
- adj. certain
- adj. secure
- adv. certainly
- adv. securely
- v. mining, UK, dialect To percolate, trickle, or ooze, as water through a crack.
GNU Webster's 1913
Etymologies
- From Middle English siker ("secure, safe, stable, certain; gewiss, securely, safely, certainly"), from Old English sicer, sicor ("secure from, free from guilt and the punishment, safe, free from danger or harm, sure, certain, free from doubt, trustworthy"), from Proto-Germanic *sikuraz (“free, secure”), from Latin sēcūrus ("secure", literally "without care"). See secure. Cognate with Scots siker, seker ("safe, secure"), North Frisian sijcker ("sure, secure"), Dutch zeker ("sure, certain, safe, secure, confirmed"), German sicher ("sure, secure, confirmed"), Swedish säker ("secure, safe, sure"), Norwegian sikker ("secure"). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“IWhat makes me sicker is that people actually want her to be our next President.”
Poll: Rising number of voters find campaign too negative, dull
“Triebel (more known in Germany for her stage work) and Vogel are both so natural and empathetic together that the love story at the heart of this, especially as he grows sicker, is hard to shake off.”
“What makes these insane priorities the sicker is that this obscene amount of money is spent in the name of defending either freedom or socialism ... no doubt the dead and dying are relieved that freedom and socialism are being so efficiently defended!”
“To complicate matters, you cannot treat for TB and give ARV med’s at the same time, so all of these patients are steadily getting sicker from the AIDS while they are recovering from the TB.”
“Now a study done at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center shows that the sicker are also the less-educated.”
“It's that the hospital patients are what's called 'sicker and quicker' - they need more attention.”
“This opens them up to antiselection -- in other words sicker people who need the higher cover migrate to the scheme.”
“So why not let Internists concentrate on the "sicker" patients they supposedly excel at caring for -- in the hospital.”
“Women heroin addicts in treatment were defined as "sicker" and more deviant than their male counterparts (7,23,77-78).”
“Drug-using women were seen as victims, "sicker" than their male counterparts.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sicker’.
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Anglish
inwit, againbite, speechcraft, starlore, foresayer, yeartide, endsay, yblent, blent, sicker, gleeman, uncleft and 11 more...
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VanishedOne's Words
facipulator, fetiphobia, gules, boustrophedon, reverse boustroph..., unreal, ensiform, xiphoid, romhack, heritage, floccinaucinihili..., johnian and 1004 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sicker.
wytukaze In the "certainly" sense, it's a relative of German sicher and, distantly, sure and secure. It was resurrected in the Early Modern English period (outside of dialectal usage) as part of the reaction against inkhorn terms. Nov 13, 2008
vanishedone Besides being a comparative, apparently this is an archaic/dialect way of saying 'certainly' or 'safe'/'make safe' and, says Webster's, a mining term (though the OED just marks it 'rare') meaning 'To percolate, trickle, or ooze, as water through a crack. Also written sigger, zigger, and zifhyr.' Aug 9, 2008