Have you ever been ill, with a fever, headache, and sore throat? I’m sure that everyone has been ill at least once. Now, have you ever been sick, meaning great? So while you are sitting at home ‘sick’, thinking you’re going to die, your classmate calls their new hat ‘sick’. People have changed the meaning of sick to mean great, special, neat, or awesome. The word sick should be eliminated from the English language.

The word sick means “afflicted with ill health or disease; inclined to vomit.” The girl at home vomiting is more likely to be ‘sick’ than a new baseball cap. If the word sick was used in correct context by most people, there would be no need to eliminate it. Unfortunately, there are too many people who use this word to describe something as neat. Words should be used as their definition defines them.

At last year’s prom the prom queen was upset because someone said she looked ‘sick’, and she didn’t know if that meant she looked good or pale in the face. The other day in class, two students were talking to each other and one of them said something was sick, the teacher turned around and asked who was sick. Obviously, these two different generations have different meanings for the word sick, one of them is correct and the other is not. If one generation can’t use ‘sick’ correctly, it should be eliminated from the English language. In place of ‘sick’, one can use the word ‘ill’. For the people who use it incorrectly, they can replace it with other adjectives like interesting and use words in their correct context.


Removing ‘sick’ from the English language will mostly benefit the younger generation. Eliminating sick will make young people sound more intelligent. It will also make the elderly less grumpy with youths because they will be able to understand them, and they won’t have to beat them with their cane because they said their flowers looked ‘sick’ (afflicted with ill health or disease; inclined to vomit). So now the question is, “Are you sick?”