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ailment

UK/ˈeɪ̯lmənt/US/ˈeɪ̯lmənt/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,481 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: ailments

An ailment is a minor but persistent illness. Minor ailments, the ailments of old age.

It is never serious, which is why the word sounds almost affectionate. Most a pharmacy sells is for an ailment rather than for anything a doctor would treat.

Michael Ancher · CC0

Definitions of ailment

  1. 1nounailmentA minor but persistent illness.B2+

    “He had every ailment on the list and nothing that would kill him.”

ailment is an illness.

Where it comes from

From ail + -ment.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

ailment in the wild

  • Due to a painful back ailment in his senior year, Vandivier's playing career was cut short.

    Fuzzy Vandivier

  • Salvage therapy, also known as rescue therapy, is a form of therapy given after an ailment does not respond to standard therapy.

    Salvage therapy

  • Best died on June 14, 1997, in Toluca Lake, California, of a heart ailment.

    Marjorie Best

  • Progressive disease or progressive illness is a disease or physical ailment whose course in most cases is the worsening, growth, or spread of the disease.

    Progressive disease

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.