How to Use ill in a Sentence

ill

1 of 3 adjective
  • They had been subjected to months of ill treatment.
  • That dog can eat almost anything with no ill effects.
  • For better or ill, the press is the only place to get such a thing.
    Sebastian Junger, National Review, 25 Jan. 2024
  • Eclipses appear as ill omens in Shakespeare and, of course, the Bible.
    John Penner, Los Angeles Times, 6 Apr. 2024
  • At least that day, no one from the kitchen crew had called in sick or had to stay home with an ill child.
    Hannah Poukish, The Mercury News, 25 Mar. 2024
  • But when Sara’s father falls ill, she’s forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past.
    Sarah Yang, Sunset Magazine, 6 July 2023
  • Burke fell ill March 10 while on a spring break trip to Mexico with Clements and a group of friends.
    David Aaro, ajc, 10 May 2023
  • There was a time when founder Fred DeLuca was ill for years and put his sister in charge.
    Phil Wahba, Fortune, 7 July 2023
  • All five of the patients had been in Tecate within two weeks of becoming ill.
    Melissa Rudy, Fox News, 11 Dec. 2023
  • A week later, three of the four guests were dead, and the other was seriously ill.
    Rachel Pannett, Washington Post, 2 Nov. 2023
  • And so there’s a lot of stuff, for good or for ill, that is circulating in public.
    Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 15 July 2023
  • Texas authorities did not say where the child was from or why the child became ill.
    Claire Thornton, USA TODAY, 12 Aug. 2023
  • On the other side of the ball is an addict who is seriously ill.
    Blake Apgar, The Salt Lake Tribune, 18 Aug. 2023
  • Whether that bodes ill for Gunderson remains to be seen.
    Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Sep. 2023
  • The locals have come to believe the child is some sort of demon, bringing ill fortune to their village.
    Brian Lowry, CNN, 13 Oct. 2023
  • For good or ill, anything linked to the military is seen in some corners of D.C.’s elite class as sacrosanct.
    Philip Elliott, Time, 6 July 2023
  • In the subsequent six months, three more Indonesians fell ill with beriberi.
    Los Angeles Times, 7 Nov. 2023
  • The stranger asked to see Patrick, but after he was informed that the parson was ill in bed, the encounter took an unsettling turn.
    V.m. Braganza, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Oct. 2023
  • Overall, 85 people became ill, all under the age of 16.
    Erika Edwards, NBC News, 9 Nov. 2023
  • For decades, mentally ill people have been left to fend for themselves.
    The San Diego Union-Tribune Staff, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Feb. 2024
  • For years before Jordan Neely, a mentally ill homeless man, was killed in the subway, the city had its eye on him.
    Andy Newman, New York Times, 13 May 2023
  • Regrettably, Marty had been too ill to travel to New York that day.
    Kai Bird, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 Feb. 2024
  • But by mid-2005, Morrisseau was ill and living in a nursing home.
    Jordan Michael Smith, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Feb. 2024
  • While the rest of us have been just going on with our lives, Drake appears to still be harboring some ill feelings about Kanye West.
    Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Not letting people's words or ill intentions be a reason to hold my arms close again.
    Emily Strohm, Peoplemag, 2 Aug. 2023
  • Central Michigan played without quarterback Bert Emanuel, Jr. who was ill and did not make the trip.
    Mark Heim | Mheim@al.com, al, 16 Sep. 2023
  • The child, who has not been publicly identified, became ill as the Turkish Airlines flight was headed to the U.S., the airline said in a statement.
    Chantal Da Silva, NBC News, 12 June 2023
  • Left back Jordi Alba was out ill and missing from the starting lineup.
    Michelle Kaufman, Miami Herald, 8 Mar. 2024
  • Eating the meat from a deer that is visibly ill with EHD is not recommended.
    Katie Hill, Outdoor Life, 29 Feb. 2024
  • At one point, the judge called a recess when a woman whose daughter died within hours of birth became ill and overcome on the witness stand.
    USA TODAY, 20 July 2023
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ill

2 of 3 adverb
  • Please don't think ill of me.
  • He was a good man who never spoke ill of anyone.
  • He is being ill served by his advisers.
  • Your blinds are out of style or ill-fitting on new windows.
    Jodhaira Rodriguez, Good Housekeeping, 10 Feb. 2023
  • The children, ages 12 to 16, fell ill and were evaluated at the scene.
    Christian Martinez, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2023
  • Joe: The Rise of Cobra are among those whose that creatives have spoken ill of.
    Aaron Couch, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 May 2023
  • The 14-year-old boy fell ill along the trail and lost consciousness, park officials said.
    Francisco Guzman, USA TODAY, 25 June 2023
  • From there, the clip takes a sad turn, as the pair’s idyllic escape to the country is soon marred by one of them falling ill.
    Dan Heching, CNN, 29 July 2023
  • For weeks, the region went quiet, as people fell ill and stayed home.
    Dake Kang, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Dec. 2022
  • In 2016, Patrick fell ill with cancer, and Mike welcomed him home to Shreveport.
    David D. Kirkpatrick, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2024
  • Not the wee morning hours under the cover of night but the full-on sunlight of day, so ill-suited to haunting.
    Mariana Enriquez, The New Yorker, 6 Feb. 2023
  • One in 5 of the state’s 100 lockups have no air conditioning, and dozens of inmates and guards fall ill each year.
    Dallas News, 19 Jan. 2023
  • Michael Cranfield fell ill on his way home from a two-week trip to Canada, his brother said.
    Ovetta Wiggins, Washington Post, 5 Oct. 2023
  • More than 700 people fell ill in four states and three other children died as well.
    Leanne Italie, Hartford Courant, 22 Oct. 2022
  • Most of these are small and mid-market teams who could ill-afford a drastic the financial hit.
    Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY, 29 Jan. 2023
  • The team’s security specialist was the first to fall ill.
    Bishop Sand, Washington Post, 17 Feb. 2024
  • The odd jobs that kept them afloat disappeared during the shutdowns, food prices soared and then his father fell ill.
    Hannah Dreier Meridith Kohut, New York Times, 18 Sep. 2023
  • And since the women can’t even read, they’re bound to be ill-prepared for modern life away from the community.
    Kyle Smith, WSJ, 22 Dec. 2022
  • Although their romance is somewhat ill-fated, the two still fall in love — hardships and all.
    Adrianna Freedman, Good Housekeeping, 26 Dec. 2022
  • In the weeks that followed, about seven people in two villages in the eastern province of Kié-Ntem fell ill and died.
    Helen Branswell, STAT, 22 Mar. 2023
  • In many ways, her son is half her ex-husband, so speaking ill of the boy’s father only hurts her own son.
    Annie Lane, oregonlive, 16 July 2023
  • For the time being, betting on either of those outcomes would seem ill-advised.
    Matthew Futterman, New York Times, 18 Nov. 2022
  • Many Americans who fall ill have no choice but to rack up debt in order to stay healthy or, in some cases, stay alive.
    Michele Grim, Fortune, 10 Mar. 2023
  • The boy’s father said his wife and child both fell ill around noon on Tuesday, showing signs of gas poisoning.
    Nectar Gan, CNN, 3 Nov. 2022
  • Through its own forecasts, the BOE seems to be saying that tightening as much as the market thinks would be ill advised.
    Jon Sindreu, WSJ, 3 Nov. 2022
  • After all, not all solo hikers are ill prepared, and not everyone is in it for the thrift.
    Shikha Tripathi, Condé Nast Traveler, 23 Mar. 2023
  • Her lawyers argued that their nanny did not witness him acting ill or use an EpiPen.
    Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 12 June 2023
  • His wife, Jennifer and daughter, Brooke, moved back briefly last year while Jennifer cared for her mother, who fell ill and died in May.
    Alexis Cubit, The Courier-Journal, 8 Dec. 2022
  • Doctors were still unsure of what caused Gold to fall ill at that point and the absence would eventually span the full 2022 season.
    Michael Casagrande | McAsagrande@al.com, al, 21 July 2023
  • Largely, what this game comes down to is the Titans defense is ill-equipped to defend the Jaguars’ preferred method of attack on offense.
    Nick Hennion, Chicago Tribune, 7 Jan. 2023
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ill

3 of 3 noun
  • The state doesn’t have enough intensive care unit beds to treat the ill.
    al, 9 Sep. 2021
  • But the Season Three finale didn’t cure all of that year’s ills.
    Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 10 Nov. 2023
  • Still, the ills of white supremacy are at work there as well, dating back to the Gold Rush days.
    Elizabeth Robinson, NBC News, 6 June 2023
  • And burdening the rest of us with all the related ills.
    Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 1 Feb. 2024
  • The horror genre can be a handy metaphor for all sorts of societal ills.
    Dallas News, 22 Feb. 2023
  • No public inquiry can deal with all of the ills that have driven weeks of protests.
    The Economist, 20 Aug. 2019
  • Those are the ills that led to the deadly showdown between the two sons of Omaha.
    Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2023
  • That kind of profit growth can cure a lot of ills, and the Big Three have agreed to raise their employees' pay.
    Marley Jay, NBC News, 14 Sep. 2023
  • All these social ills have worsened, and the collapse is more than moral.
    Dominic Green, Washington Examiner, 12 Jan. 2024
  • New Orleans has struggled in the red zone all season and Hill appears to be the cure for those ills.
    Eddie Brown, San Diego Union-Tribune, 31 Oct. 2023
  • Progressives clash with centrists over the scope and speed of the changes needed to address the country’s ills.
    Michael Bobelian, Washington Post, 29 June 2023
  • The Russian leader falsely blames the United States and its allies for the world’s ills, including the war in Gaza.
    Robyn Dixon, Washington Post, 14 Nov. 2023
  • Aliou Sullivan first learned about the ills of fossil fuels in fourth grade.
    Sonali Kohli, Los Angeles Times, 20 Sep. 2019
  • This societal ill seemed to peak with Princess Diana’s death in 1997 but has only gotten worse in the decades since.
    Michelle Ruiz, Vogue, 26 Oct. 2021
  • The only protection against these ills were spells cast by the deceased Ankh herself.
    Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Jan. 2020
  • Wellness, Blei wrote, is in part a response to societal ills.
    Brittney McNamara, Teen Vogue, 27 Jan. 2020
  • This is not to suggest that cities like Detroit don't suffer from many urban ills.
    John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, 18 July 2019
  • The same spirit that fought against the ills of the past keeps remaking and reforming itself for today.
    Caille Millner, SFChronicle.com, 8 Nov. 2019
  • For the past 30+ years, millions of Americans have blamed MSG for a host of health ills, even though countless studies have proven that myth false.
    Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Apr. 2023
  • Pity people that speak ill of others because while some of us r dancing, the others r too afraid.
    Megan Stein, Country Living, 22 Feb. 2020
  • Jackson describes a litany of social ills, from hunger and homelessness to crime and drug abuse, all set to a grinding new-jack bassline.
    Sal Cinquemani, Billboard, 19 Sep. 2019
  • That part of us that stands in protest to the ills of the physical world is, in fact, evidence of our perpetual nature.
    Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 24 Nov. 2023
  • Some days the ills of the city seem miasmal and mental, a delirium of drugs and dysfunctions, a souring in the gut like dysentery.
    Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Feb. 2023
  • Have a cup of coffee with Paul Ruiz and expect to hear him rail about societal ills that need attention.
    Elaine Ayala, ExpressNews.com, 24 Oct. 2019
  • The economic valuation of life is at the root of the variety of ills enacted by and through the health care system.
    Abby Cartus, The New Republic, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The trio discusses the ills of the city, nation and world until a waitress arrives at their table bearing a heavy tray with their meals.
    Vincent T. Davis, ExpressNews.com, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Fixing the GOP’s dwindling pipeline of talent, and the party’s broader ills, is an even harder task.
    Elizabeth N. Saunders, Foreign Affairs, 20 Feb. 2024
  • One primary concern is that teaching about these ills can make people feel bad and ashamed.
    J. Luke Wood, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Mar. 2023
  • Incongruous slavery hook doesn’t work, but lots of Velázquez and Murillo cure all ills.
    Brian T. Allen, National Review, 17 June 2023
  • While the bulk of the paper focused on the ills of unfettered freeway-building, its final pages turned to the topic that would define the group’s legacy.
    John Aguilar, The Denver Post, 29 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ill.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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