iller

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun Aug 16 18:08:32 UTC 2009


On Aug 16, 2009, at 10:34 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>
> In central NC (and maybe elsewhere), "ill" can mean irritated or
> annoyed.

not, so far as i can tell, in the OED.  but i'm pretty sure it's in
DARE.

but i never proposed to survey all the extant senses of "ill".
Victor's original quotation clearly was in the 'sick, unhealthy'
sense, so i focused on that.  the rap/hip-hop uses came up only
because they make it so hard to do searches for "iller" and "illest"
in the 'sick, unhealthy' sense; there are just so many occurrences of
them.

arnold

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