ILL HEALTH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ill health mean? 

• ILL HEALTH (noun)
  The noun ILL HEALTH has 1 sense:

1. a state in which you are unable to function normally and without pain

  Familiarity information: ILL HEALTH used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ILL HEALTH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state in which you are unable to function normally and without pain

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

health problem; ill health; unhealthiness

Hypernyms ("ill health" is a kind of...):

pathological state (a physical condition that is caused by disease)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ill health"):

dyscrasia (an abnormal or physiologically unbalanced state of the body)

illness; malady; sickness; unwellness (impairment of normal physiological function affecting part or all of an organism)

invalidism (chronic ill health)

biliousness (gastric distress caused by a disorder of the liver or gall bladder)

infection (the pathological state resulting from the invasion of the body by pathogenic microorganisms)

pathology (any deviation from a healthy or normal condition)

affliction (a condition of suffering or distress due to ill health)

harm; hurt; injury; trauma (any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc.)

softness; unfitness (poor physical condition; being out of shape or out of condition (as from a life of ease and luxury))

Antonym:

good health (the state of being vigorous and free from bodily or mental disease)

 Context examples 

A state of ill health caused by medical treatment, usually due to mistakes made in treatment.

(Iatrogenesis, NCI Thesaurus)

(Symptoms not explained by ill health).

(NPI - Complain of Butterflies, Racing or Pounding Heart, NCI Thesaurus)

And, seriously, Miss Fairfax is naturally so pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's ill-humour or ill health.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Tell Beth Frank asked for her, and was sorry to hear of her ill health.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Sir Nigel Loring and Sir Oliver Buttesthorn at once hung their shields over the side, and displayed their pennons as was the custom, noting with the keenest interest the answering symbols which told the names of the cavaliers who had been constrained by ill health or wounds to leave the prince at so critical a time.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on account of ill health, he must not be allowed to go back, and we must endeavour to make some more suitable and fortunate provision for him in this country.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mrs. John Knightley was delighted to be of use; any thing of ill health was a recommendation to her—and though not so fond of a dentist as of a Mr. Wingfield, she was quite eager to have Harriet under her care.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)