Meaning of illness in English

illness

noun

/ˈɪl.nəs/ us

/ˈɪl.nəs/

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B1 [ C ]

a disease of the body or mind:

He died at home after a long illness.

B2 [ U ]

the state of being ill:

She had five days off work due to illness.

More examplesFewer examples

We are lacking three members of staff due to illness.
Many people suffer from some form of mental illness during their lives.
Symptoms of the illness include a high temperature and a persistent dry cough.
Many illnesses which once killed are today curable.
Four million hours were lost last year through stress-related illnesses.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Disease & illness - general words

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(Definition of illness from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

illness | American Dictionary

illness

noun [ C/U ]

/ˈɪl·nəs/

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a condition in which the body or mind is harmed because an organ or part is unable to work as it usually does; a disease or sickness:

[ U ] mental illness

[ C ] He died at home after a long illness.

(Definition of illness from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of illness

illness

For schizophrenia patients, treatment plans from the onset of illness should involve health promotion.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Only in a small proportion of cases were referrals made purely on grounds of existing illness in patient or family.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Thus, individuals experiencing low strain are hypothesized to have a lower than average risk of illness and psychological disturbance.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Over the past 20 years little progress has been made in reducing the length of depressive episodes in those with bipolar illness.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

There was a significant relation between reaction times on the identification task and past burden of illness, particularly past number of depressions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Although those with more moderate illness remained in the community, they were not necessarily recognized as having a mental illness.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

That is, they reflect a primary deficit, not secondary to other aspects of the illness (clinical symptoms) or other treatment-related factors (medication effects).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These findings tended to revert to normal in the third month of illness.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Healing illnesses requires understanding what diseases mean to people.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For some proponents of patient autonomy, control involved not only becoming informed - understanding one's illness and knowing what to expect - but making decisions as well.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The duration of illness was less than 3 days for all cases.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The median time from onset of illness in the first patient until investigation of the outbreak was 27 days (range 0 -161).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In order to eliminate such effects, we conducted a partial correlation analysis controlling for the illness duration.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Rather, poor pre-morbid work or social adjustment and poor course of illness were potent risk factors for diverse forms of disability in persons with psychosis.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The practical implications for investigation of mental illness of the differences and commonalities between psychopathology and psychology, for example, could be tremendous.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of illness

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with illness

illness

These are words often used in combination with illness.

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acute illness

Some patients present with falls as a manifestation of acute illness, and falls are one of the classically described atypical presentations of acute illness in old age.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

brief illness

He died after a brief illness and a subsequent operation.

From

Wikipedia

This example is from Wikipedia and may be reused under a CC BY-SA license.

childhood illness

It is thought to be because of traffic fume pollution, but whatever its cause, asthma is the biggest cause of childhood illness.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

See all collocations with illness

What is the pronunciation of illness?

Translations of illness

in Chinese (Traditional)

（身體或精神上的）疾病, 生病…

Meaning of illness in English

illness | American Dictionary

Examples of illness

Collocations with illness

illness

Translations of illness

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