Meaning & use
debilitating illness
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A sickness that steadily weakens a person so much that normal daily activities become difficult or impossible.
Grammar: Countable: a debilitating illness, several debilitating illnesses.
Patterns
- suffer from a debilitating illness
- a debilitating illness such as something
A debilitating illness forced her to give up her career as a dancer.
Chronic fatigue can be a debilitating illness that lasts for years.
He cared for his brother, who had a debilitating illness.
Word forms
| plural | debilitating illnesses |
|---|
Common combinations
- suffer from a debilitating illness
- She suffered from a debilitating illness for most of her youth.
- battle a debilitating illness
- He battled a debilitating illness with remarkable courage.
- long-term debilitating illness
- The charity helps people with a long-term debilitating illness.
- struck down by a debilitating illness
- The author was struck down by a debilitating illness in her fifties.
Synonyms and how they differ
- chronic illness
- Chronic illness describes how long a sickness lasts, but does not say how limiting it is, unlike debilitating.
- serious illness
- Serious illness suggests danger to health or life, while debilitating stresses weakness and loss of ability.
- crippling illness
- Crippling illness is stronger and more dramatic, suggesting almost total loss of function.
Opposites
Word family
- debilitate verb
- to make someone very weak
- debility noun
- a state of physical weakness
- debilitation noun
- the process of becoming weak
- debilitating adjective
- making someone weak or unable to function
Commonly confused: debilitating illness or degenerative illness?
debilitating illness vs degenerative illness
A degenerative illness gets worse over time, but a debilitating illness may or may not be progressive; it describes the limiting effect.
Practice
A ____ illness left him too weak to work or even climb the stairs.
Choose one answer.
Debilitating describes an illness that removes strength and ability. The other options describe different qualities and do not fit leaving him too weak to climb the stairs.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “debilitating illness”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.