Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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About this entry:
First published 1960 (SND Vol. V).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

ILL-, adv., adj. In combs.:

I. adv. 1. With difficulty, as Ill-Bearin.

2. Badly, perversely, in a wrong way: gen. with ppl.adj., e.g. Ill-cleckit, Ill-come, Ill-contrived, Ill-deedy, Ill-designed, Ill-faured, Ill-gatit, Ill-gien, Ill-named; with verbs or to form verb combs., in contrast to Eng. where adv. and v. are gen. treated as separate words (exc. ill-treat, ill-use), e.g. Ill-gab, Ill-set, Ill-tongue, Ill-will, Ill-wind.

3. As a neg. or quasi-neg.: see Ill-able, Ill-fain, Ill-hear, Ill-please, Ill-wordie.

4. With intensive force, freq. in I.Sc. (cf. Norw. ill- in same sense): e.g. Ill-cankert, Ill-dereyt, Ill-fashed, Ill-heady, Ill-kamerd, Ill-scathe, Ill-snored, Ill-treeskiferd.

II. adj. Where the second element is a n., and the hyphen strictly unnecessary, used in special combs., as Ill-bind, Ill-brew, Ill-chat, Ill-ee, Ill-gab, Ill-gate, Ill-name, Ill-set, Ill-sonce, etc. Other combs. not in entries beginning with Ill- may be found under the second element.