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.
  • My late husband was ill for six years.
    — Jeanne Phillips, Mercury News, 21 Feb. 2026
  • First, how long has the patient been ill for?
    — The New York Times News Service Syndicate, San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Jan. 2026
  • But this wasn’t even speaking ill of the dead.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 19 Sep. 2025
  • How many people will fall ill with measles this year?
    — Editorial, Boston Herald, 25 Apr. 2026
  • The person who was supposed to be here got ill.
    — Melonee Hurt, Nashville Tennessean, 20 Oct. 2025
  • The ill feeling has been brewing for a long time.
    — Roshane Thomas, New York Times, 11 Sep. 2025
  • There was no ill intent towards the hit.
    — Jess Myers, Twin Cities, 15 Oct. 2025
  • For better or ill, the press is the only place to get such a thing.
    — Sebastian Junger, National Review, 25 Jan. 2024
  • There’s no ill intent on anyone’s part.
    — Darrell Smith, Sacbee.com, 17 Mar. 2026
  • But what about the mentally ill?
    — Lucius Riccio, New York Daily News, 1 Feb. 2026
  • Within weeks, so many of his classmates fell ill that their school shut down.
    — Mary Beth Sheridan, CNN Money, 17 May 2026
  • 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 what if following the truth has ill effects down the line?
    — Will Carless, USA Today, 17 Jan. 2026
  • How many parents can afford to take 3 weeks off work to care for an ill child?
    — Judy Stone, Forbes.com, 6 Sep. 2025
  • Anisimova had the bad luck of ill-health to manage.
    — James Hansen, New York Times, 30 May 2026
  • Little has been shared about the children who became ill.
    — Madeline Heim, jsonline.com, 5 Sep. 2025
  • Ten people who had close contact with her became ill.
    — Aria Bendix, NBC news, 12 May 2026
  • Corporations are in on the fun, too, these days, for good or ill.
    — Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker, 18 June 2026
  • The disruption of work, for good and for ill, should be front and central.
    — Scott Pelley, CBS News, 26 Apr. 2026
  • Koren, who has been ill in recent years, could not be reached for comment.
    — Ben Taub, New Yorker, 26 Jan. 2026
  • Young, old, ill or thin pets have a higher risk of injury in cold weather.
    — Alexis Simmerman, Austin American Statesman, 26 Jan. 2026
  • Gallant started feeling ill about a month ago.
    — Pierre Lebrun, New York Times, 15 Jan. 2026
  • To date, eight people have fallen ill in cases linked to the ship, and three have died.
    — Kathryn Palmer, USA Today, 11 May 2026
  • That means 1 in 10 people who fall ill due to this disease will die.
    — Katia Hetter, CNN Money, 4 Sep. 2025
  • They were supposed to allow the ill passengers to get off the ship.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 19 May 2026
  • Texas authorities did not say where the child was from or why the child became ill.
    — Claire Thornton, USA TODAY, 12 Aug. 2023
  • My father got ill very early and was not himself anymore.
    — Rustin Dodd, New York Times, 10 Apr. 2026
  • By that time, Winston was ill and no longer coming into work.
    — Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 29 Dec. 2025

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.
  • Nearly a dozen people across five states fell ill.
    — CNN Money, 14 June 2026
  • Nearly a dozen people across five states fell ill.
    — Annie Waldman, ProPublica, 9 June 2026
  • Why are jails ill-equipped to provide mental health care?
    — Cody Copeland, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 22 Aug. 2025
  • Or a gaggle of ill-behaved bros.
    — Elise Taylor, Vanity Fair, 22 Apr. 2026
  • Adding new personnel to the mix at such a time could be ill advised.
    — Brian Steinberg, Variety, 19 Feb. 2026
  • Ten more people who attended the wake fell ill.
    — ArsTechnica, 8 May 2026
  • Not everything went smoothly, as one of them fell ill.
    — Rachel Chang, Travel + Leisure, 24 June 2026
  • In some of those cases, concerns proved to be ill-founded.
    — Oliver Kay, New York Times, 2 Mar. 2026
  • For weeks, the region went quiet, as people fell ill and stayed home.
    — Dake Kang, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Dec. 2022
  • My initial concern over the premise was ill-founded.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Adapt if your current costume is ill-fitting.
    — Usa Today, USA Today, 4 June 2026
  • Earle watched helplessly as friends fell ill.
    — Christina Ray Stanton, Time, 2 June 2026
  • Nothing spoils a vacation faster than an ill-fitting pair of shoes.
    — Michelle Baricevic, Travel + Leisure, 12 Jan. 2026
  • The joke, at first, was how ill-suited for the gig Friedland was on paper.
    — Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 29 June 2026
  • The tools of ordinary criticism seem ill-matched to the light that floods from these pages.
    — Literary Hub, 10 Feb. 2026
  • Shamet, like Clarkson, could have been ill-prepared for the moment.
    — James L. Edwards Iii, New York Times, 9 May 2026
  • Long gone are the itchy, ill-fitting-but-necessary sweaters of fall and winter.
    — Kristin Braswell, Travel + Leisure, 2 Nov. 2025
  • Isn’t there supposed to be an Olympics on the way for which the city appears ill-prepared?
    — Classical Music Critic, Los Angeles Times, 20 Mar. 2026
  • In many ways, her son is half her ex-husband, so speaking ill of the boy’s father only hurts her own son.
    — Dear Annie, cleveland, 16 July 2023
  • More than 700 people fell ill in four states and three other children died as well.
    — Leanne Italie, Hartford Courant, 22 Oct. 2022
  • Even members of the military police are ill-suited for the task.
    — David French, Mercury News, 20 Aug. 2025
  • 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
  • For the time being, betting on either of those outcomes would seem ill-advised.
    — Matthew Futterman, New York Times, 18 Nov. 2022
  • When her mother falls ill, Michelle is forced to face the memories of her childhood.
    — Amanda Favazza, Southern Living, 15 Feb. 2026
  • Don’t eliminate the rule, but amend it for this dominant player who fell ill.
    — Chuck Murr, Forbes.com, 17 May 2026
  • Today, his sisters say, their family is aging and ill-equipped to meet his needs.
    — Olivia Olander, Chicago Tribune, 4 Jan. 2026
  • The world is ill prepared for a major resurgence in diphtheria.
    — Patricia Callahan, ProPublica, 19 Mar. 2026

ill

3 of 3 noun
  • For all their ills, the Chargers are in first place.
    — Tom Krasovic, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Oct. 2025
  • And this one guy at this one firm can't solve all of his industry's ills.
    — Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, NPR, 8 Apr. 2026
  • That solves a lot of problems, a lot of ills of society.
    — Liz Hoffman, semafor.com, 4 Nov. 2025
  • The expectations, the hope is so high for that prescription to be the salve for their ills.
    — Torie Bosch, STAT, 25 Apr. 2026
  • Reform’s pitch to voters is that, for many of these ills, mass immigration is to blame.
    — Alexander Smith, NBC news, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Charli isn’t pretending the world’s ills are curable through a sweaty night dancing with friends.
    — Scottie Andrew, CNN Money, 2 June 2026
  • The catalog of ills is familiar.
    — Danielle Allen, The Atlantic, 21 May 2026
  • Pandora has opened her box and its ills are fully integrated into our world.
    — Richard Lawson, HollywoodReporter, 18 Sep. 2025
  • No, coach Marco Sturm did not reach back for a 20th century bag skate to cure the team’s ills.
    — Steve Conroy, Boston Herald, 24 Oct. 2025
  • On this near-ideal night, all the ills of the past few years faded away, and an era — or at least a month — of real ambition began.
    — Henry Bushnell, New York Times, 14 June 2026
  • Through humor, the master is about to expose humanity's ills.
    — Rance Collins, Entertainment Weekly, 28 June 2026
  • Winning tends to cure a lot of ills, and the Hornets hit the road this week with two recent home victories to their credit.
    — Joe Davidson, Sacbee.com, 23 Jan. 2026
  • The resulting social ills of crime, disease, and despair were blamed not on the systems that produced them, but on the people who bore their weight.
    — Fahad Zuberi, Time, 5 Nov. 2025
  • Certainly, in the past several years, the app has been blamed for any number of contemporary social ills.
    — Naomi Fry, New Yorker, 27 Dec. 2025
  • Speaking ill of Mike Trout’s flawless game was impossible.
    — Sam Blum, New York Times, 11 Sep. 2025
  • The conductor added that opera not only reveals societal ills but can model what an ideal society can look like.
    — Malia Mendez, Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2026
  • Despite so many errors, The Information is now the paper of record on the ills of Nvidia.
    — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 21 Dec. 2025
  • But that also eradicates a crucial option - to mount a show trial and scapegoat him for all the ills of his rule, thus absolving others.
    — Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com, 29 June 2026
  • In his songs, the Virginia rapper renders societal ills in high definition.
    — Paul A. Thompson, Pitchfork, 30 Mar. 2026
  • Faced with high rates of suicide and other ills such as addiction, corrections officers have long been concerned about the stress and violence of their jobs.
    — Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Hollywood has always been an easy political punching bag–a convenient scapegoat for a host of intractable ills.
    — Maer Roshan, HollywoodReporter, 10 Mar. 2026
  • In their assessments, desegregation and the passage of time have cured all of America’s racial ills.
    — Time, 4 Sep. 2025
  • And Pearl, while making his team’s case Thursday, unwittingly did a fine job of spelling out the ills of expansion as well.
    — Joe Rexrode, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2026
  • Of course, some of society’s foremost ills in 2026 owe themselves to the World Wide Web.
    — Joe Rexrode, New York Times, 22 June 2026
  • There are people like myself who don’t agree with the extreme policies of both parties realizing that neither side has all the answers to solve the nation’s ills.
    — Chris Stirewalt, The Hill, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Her transgression is one of the worst things imaginable; in a way, what Emma is hiding stems from a societal ill that gets papered over every day.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 3 Apr. 2026
  • Macbeth, also an unstable Scottish king, blames the witches for the ills caused by his own murderous decisions.
    — Emily Zarevich, JSTOR Daily, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Orbán has long sought to consolidate his power through concocting scapegoats for Hungary’s ills.
    — Christian Edwards, CNN Money, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Yet football, which the Ivies practically invented—ills and all—remains a different beast.
    — Jacob Feldman, Sportico.com, 28 Nov. 2025
  • Blaming the Cubs’ ills on off-the-field issues is entertaining and keeps some sportswriters employed well past their expiration date.
    — Paul Sullivan, Chicago Tribune, 27 May 2026

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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