🛌 A fake sick day 🤥 A faker

sickie

1 9.0

A day off work taken by pretending to be sick

noun
/ˈsɪki/

Slang

: falta por enfermedad

After feeling overwhelmed with work, she planned to take a sickie and relax at home.

Examples

So... pulls a sickie.

AstroVan (2025)
So you took a sickie.

Backyard Ashes (2013)
You can't pull a sickie on England game before I kick off about a right touch because we're doing soapbox on Saturday.
WHAT A SICKIE.

Half Past Dead (2002)
He decided to take a sickie on Monday, claiming he had a cold.
Many employees consider taking a sickie during a big sports event to enjoy the game.

Synonyms

malingering

vssickie

Formal

1 9.1

Pretending to be ill or injured to avoid work

is the specific act of taking a day off by pretending to be ill

How Legitimate

leave

Formal

443 3.8

sick leave

14 2.4

sickie

Slang

1 9.0

shirking

1 6.5

truancy

12 6.6

Surface Forms

sickie singular

sickies plural

Morphology

sickie = sick (semi-transparent) = sick + ie

Formed from 'sick' + informal/diminutive suffix '-ie'; the link to sickness is clear but the idiomatic meaning 'a day off (often feigned)' is not fully predictable.

Etymology

The word sickie comes from sick ('ill') plus the friendly ending -ie, and it became common in Australia and the UK. A helpful way to remember this sense is that a sickie is a pretend 'sick' day, a day off when someone says they are 'ill' but really are not.