SICKENING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sickening mean? 

• SICKENING (adjective)
  The adjective SICKENING has 1 sense:

1. causing or able to cause nausea

  Familiarity information: SICKENING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SICKENING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing or able to cause nausea

Synonyms:

loathsome; nauseating; nauseous; noisome; offensive; queasy; sickening; vile

Context example:

a sickening stench

Similar:

unwholesome (detrimental to physical or moral well-being)

Derivation:

sickeningness (extreme unpalatability to the mouth)

 Context examples 

I had before experienced sensations of horror, and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that I then endured.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I tell you it was sickening.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Each rolling mountain whelmed them from view, and I would wait with sickening anxiety, fearing that they would never appear again.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She had, indeed, scarcely the shadow of a hope to soothe her mind, and was reduced to so low and wan and trembling a condition, as no mother, not unkind, except Mrs. Price could have overlooked, when the third day did bring the sickening knock, and a letter was again put into her hands.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The jibs behind me cracked aloud, the rudder slammed to, the whole ship gave a sickening heave and shudder, and at the same moment the main-boom swung inboard, the sheet groaning in the blocks, and showed me the lee after-deck.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the gloom and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible reveries.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

At the same moment, as though I had been struck myself, I felt a sickening shock in the pit of my stomach.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Presently I stood within that clean, bright kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling, sickening; conscious of an aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The steamy smell of dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, was sickening.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)