Seknesse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for sickness, meaning a state of illness or bodily disease in a person
2. Obsolete Middle English word for ill health, a disorder or ailment affecting the body
3. In medieval English, the condition of being unwell, referring to illness or infirmity

Etymology: Middle English "seknesse" is the ancestor of modern "sickness," and its story is mostly one of spelling and sound. The Old English noun was "seocnes," built from the adjective "seoc" (sick) and the suffix "-nes," which made abstract nouns from adjectives, much as "-ness" does today in "kindness" or "darkness." Over the centuries the vowel shifted and the "c" softened, so the word that once sounded like "sek-nes" in Middle English settled into the familiar form we now use. The "-nes" ending deserves a note of its own. In Old English it was a productive suffix, so speakers could attach it to almost any adjective to name the state it described. "Seknesse" is therefore a transparent formation: the sick state, the condition of being unwell, with no special history beyond that pattern.