Library / English Dictionary |
AILMENT
Pronunciation (US): | (GB): |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An often persistent bodily disorder or disease; a cause for complaining
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("ailment" is a kind of...):
disorder; upset (a physical condition in which there is a disturbance of normal functioning)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ailment"):
pip (a minor nonspecific ailment)
kinetosis; motion sickness (the state of being dizzy or nauseated because of the motions that occur while traveling in or on a moving vehicle)
Derivation:
ail (cause bodily suffering to and make sick or indisposed)
ail (be ill or unwell)
Context examples:
Poor Marianne, languid and low from the nature of her malady, and feeling herself universally ill, could no longer hope that tomorrow would find her recovered; and the idea of what tomorrow would have produced, but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe; for on that day they were to have begun their journey home; and, attended the whole way by a servant of Mrs. Jennings, were to have taken their mother by surprise on the following forenoon.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Her own spirits improved by change of place and subject, by being removed three miles from Kellynch; Mary's ailments lessened by having a constant companion, and their daily intercourse with the other family, since there was neither superior affection, confidence, nor employment in the cottage, to be interrupted by it, was rather an advantage.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Researchers said eating the nuts also reduced the risk of dying from respiratory disease “by about a half’ as well as reducing the risk of diabetes by nearly 40 percent, although they added there is less data to support the effect of consuming nuts on those ailments.###!!!###
(Daily Handful of Nuts Reduces Disease Risk, VOA)
I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had—assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings—given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
But he talked of flannel waistcoats, said Marianne; and with me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)