Hello,
This is an official reporting email format at the company.Manager sends a message to HR which tells that “x person has reported himself sick”. At the beginning i didnot care.I never use “sick” for health problems.instead ill.am i wrong?
Thanks
“Sick” and “ill” are both correct, perfectly acceptable synonyms. The manager isn’t wrong, and you’re not wrong either.
I’ve not often heard “reported/called in ill”. Is it AmEng?
Americans are more likely to say “sick”. Both words are used on both continents. This just happens to be something you haven’t seen before.
In expressions such as “he called in…” or “she reported (in)…”?
The BNC gives 114 per mill. for “called in sick” and none for “called in ill”.
Do you also alternate these?
“Show me his sickness/illness report”.
Regardless of what the BNC says, it’s not unheard of to used “called in ill”. It’s much less common, but it’s said.
No, because we don’t use either of those expressions at all. We call it a “medical excuse” or a “doctor’s note”. That is, if you mean that note you present to be excused. If it’s just an ordinary report on someone’s illness, it would be a “medical report”.
I mean a report that a company may keep to record an employees periods of sickness/illness".
Even the BYU Corpus of American English give 114 for “called in sick” and nothing for “called in ill”. I just wonder who is saying the latter and where.
Regarding the advice below, would you still entice an ESL student to learn and use the combination “called in ill”?
“A good knowledge of collocations (typical word combinations) is essential for fluent and natural-sounding English. Using collocations will improve your style of written and spoken English, and knowledge of collocations is often tested in examinations such as Cambridge FCE, CAE, CPE and IELTS. Learning correct word combinations will also help you avoid common learner errors. English Collocations in Use presents and practises hundreds of collocations in typical contexts. It is ideal for students at good intermediate level and above.”
From: English Collocations in Use Intermediate
Companies here don’t keep a record of your illnesses, just of the days you took off due to illness.
Workers in offices and schools, for example, say those things.
Corpus linguistics is in its infancy, and no corpus includes everything that everyone commonly says everywhere. So far I have never seen a linguist follow people around offices all day, record what they say, transcribe it, and put it into a corpus.
The BYU corpus does not contain the term “taste fairy” at all, but I used to hear this several times a week on my jobs, and in certain industries, and even outside of them, everyone knows what this means. However, they never write this in a formal document, and they wouldn’t use the term if they were being interviewed on the radio, and it’s never in an academic document or in a newspaper. Thus, a very common term flies under the corpus radar.
I’ve never seen a native speaker do the same.
Is it a useful term for ESLers? Do you see the question of whether to learn “taste fairy” and the question of whether to use “called in sick” or “called in ill” as similar questions?
Interesting Googled result?
352,000 English pages for “called in sick”.
791 English pages for “called in ill”.
424 English pages for “taste fairy”.
Maybe the folks who use “call in ill” are the same ones who use “taste fairy”, eh?
Your Google results basically verify what Jamie said, don’t they Molly?
We do use the word ‘ill’ on this side of the pond, but I would agree that ‘sick’ is used more often over here.
On the other hand, I can’t remember ever having heard someone talk about a ‘taste fairy’. Though I can imagine that someone might say it, it is not something I hear or have heard people use regularly – as I said, I can’t remember actually having heard it at all.
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That’s only a part of what jamie said, Amy. I didn’t disagree with that part, did I?
Which collocation would you advise an ESL student to use, “call in sick” or “call in ill”, and why?
my mate said a few days ago, " I’ve been ill all weekend" I’d thought till now, ill means if someone suffers from a mentality disease. Now I’m getting to be confused. Would anybody be there who helped me to put it straight. Cheers!
Ill does not refer exclusively to mental health problems. That is why “illness” is usually preceded with “mental” when we refer to such issues. On the other hand, “illness” by itself is generally taken to relate to physical health.
There is no difference between ill and sick concerning physical health.
Illness is likelier to occur in reference to mental health than "sick, " except when we are being derogatory.
If someone we know has depression, we are not likely to call them sick or mentally sick.
If someone commits a heinous crime, such as murder, that person may be called “sick,” but the added connotation is one of corruption.
I can’t add anything to Mordant’s remarks, but I’d like to tell you to watch out for the word “mate”. It usually means spouse, that is, your husband or wife.
Hi Jamie,
The term ‘mate’ to refer to a friend is in common usage in Britain. I saw no problem with its usage in this sense, and I know that TIE will hear it daily where he currently lives,
Hi Jamie,
I find your definition of ‘mate’ quite quaint.
Alan
Alan, that definition is generally true in the United States, where mate is rare in both senses and doubly rare as a synonym for “friend.” “Mate” seems to occur more frequently in reference to homosexual partners than to heterosexual ones.
Upon rereading this, I will say that it is not necessarily used for “husband” and “wife.” It is also used for “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” and I’d say it is likelier to replace those than the previous terms.
That’s true. “Roommate” is extremely common. “Mate,” however, is not as common and not used the same way as it is in the U.K. Webster’s defines the “friend” definition as chiefly British.