Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sicken \Sick"en\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sickened; p. pr. & vb. n. Sickening.]
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To make sick; to disease.
Raise this strength, and sicken that to death.
--Prior. To make qualmish; to nauseate; to disgust; as, to sicken the stomach.
To impair; to weaken. [Obs.]
--Shak.
Sickening \Sick"en*ing\, a. Causing sickness; specif., causing surfeit or disgust; nauseating. -- Sick"en*ing*ly, adv.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"falling sick," 1725; "causing revulsion, disgust, or nausea," 1789, present participle adjective from sicken. Related: Sickeningly.
Wiktionary
1 Causing sickness or disgust. 2 (label en LGBT slang) amazing, fantastic. n. The act of making somebody sick. v
(present participle of sicken English)
WordNet
Usage examples of "sickening".
From across the cell Alec heard the soft, sickening snap of joints separating.
Alaire had a sickening feeling that the Arachs had come to the end of their patience.
The act of eating, however, with all its gustatory noises, the stinking belch that filled the cavern, the rubbing of the behemothian stomach-all this, all at once, horrifying and sickening both.
Tally began to anticipate the sickening jolt of her bungee jacket pulling her up.
With sickening thuds, axes joined the cacophonous din of death and cleaved helms, opened skulls, spilled brains.
We hit with a sickening crash that seemed to stun her, and which threw Chubby and me to the deck.
In a second, every reservation he had ever had about marriage, in general, and Dolce, in particular, swept over him, filling him with a sickening panic.
The head fell out of the tree and landed on the body with a sickening glump, and I woke up.
With a sickening sense of disaster, he remembered that he was dressed in an all-enclosing, transparent suit, and that his money was inside.
Grinning horribly, Knoop made a sudden leap in the air and came down square on the AWOL bag, which went crunch, tinkle in a sickening way.
Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl, By maggoty motions in sickening line Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine, While there far above the steep cliffs of the street The stars sing a message elusive and sweet.
Then a horror seized upon the negroes, and the men rushed forward to the rescue, for on the roof of the burning storehouse, now revealed through the sickening glare, stood the Other Maumer, waving a bunch of river reeds.
He saw the duo strain, exerting their enormous strength, and he saw Milly Odum shriek in abject fear, and then her arms parted from her shoulders with a sickening ripping sound, tendrils of flesh hanging from the ragged sockets, blood spurting from each cavity.
But each, unfortunately, was too much: too much poignancy dulled the taste, and too much sugar was sickening.
It sprawled over the landscape like a vast, bleeding pustule on the face of the earth, sickening the land, and poisoning all who lived in it.