to do ill
1
7.5
- phrasal verb
- Offensive
:
hacer el mal
- Never before in all her life had she done ill on purpose.
Are you going to actually just give in to it and in fact, do everything you can to do bad things for the rest of your life?
- Are you going to actually just give in to it and in fact, do everything you can to do bad things for the rest of your life?
- That I, I understand that everything is a grayscale and, and there is good guys that do bad shit and bad guys that does the good shit and all that stuff.
- Steerpike is in some respects an attractive character at certainly at least at first before he starts doing bad stuff.
- Well, if they're a bad person, the kind of person that we get angry at because they do bad things, we still have a duty of benevolence to them.
- You're always going to find right A kid who grew up in some like truly broken family and like the father is some I don't know when people do bad things.
Examples
-
He decided to do ill by spreading false rumors about his coworkers.
-
And as far as I can see, he does nothing but harm to the people he talks to because he gets them to do bad experiments and waste their time.
-
"Have they done ill to you?"
Fiction book (1997) -
Are you going to actually just give in to it and in fact, do everything you can to do bad things for the rest of your life?
-
"She did ill then to refuse her a charity." -- L'Estrange 67.
Blog text (24) -
Even how that doesn't matter how high your positions, if you are doing bad things for country, I would like to criticize you openly.
-
Mortimer, these words do ill beseem thy years.
-
He did not like the look of the man, lurking in the shadows and waiting for an opportunity to do ill.
Fiction book (1998) -
Eduard had been impulsive before and done ill-advised things, but he had planned this.
Fiction book (2000) -
In John's view, ill-shaped men are naturally disposed to do ill deeds.
Academic text (2000)
Synonyms
738
1.0
To cause a bad effect on people or things
To treat people or animals badly and unfairly
Behave towards a person or animal in a cruel, unfair way
Antonyms
How Harmful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to cause harm' is directly and compositionally derivable from 'do' (to cause or perform) + 'ill' (harmful or bad). Although somewhat formal or archaic in usage, the semantic relation is transparent and parallels common constructions in other languages (e.g. Spanish 'hacer daño' / French 'faire du mal'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
The phrase do ill comes from the simple image of the verb do meaning 'to act' plus ill meaning 'bad', so it literally pictures someone acting badly. That's why do ill today means 'to cause harm' or 'commit wrongful acts'.