Sick is blah. Ill is bleh.

I feel quite ill right now, in fact, and I recalled one of my favorite quotes about being ill, said by none other than my friend Kate. She declared that she was ill, and when someone asked, "not sick?" she replied, "There's a difference. Sick is blah. Ill is bleh."
     The difference is a fine line, it's true. But it does make sense. If one is sick, one is likely to be recumbent in bed or on couch, unable to go anywhere for sheer discomfort. However, if one is ill--perhaps congested and watery-eyed--one goes on with their day, sleepy, uncomfortable, and not sick enough to actually get out of doing anything, trudging through their routine like a zombie, except perhaps with more firmly attached limbs. When one is sick, everyone is at one's service, ready to come running with chicken soup, or a bucket in which to vomit. But an ill person gets no sympathy, or, at most, the denunciation that it's just allergies, or hay fever, or even the sniffles. Never mind how uncomfortable they are, with a name like they have, the sniffles will never measure up to bubonic plague or ebola or anything that ends in -itis. Nobody will share food with you if you are ill. If you are sick, you are not likely to be in a position in which food-sharing would ever cross one's mind.
     To put it in a nutshell: Sick gets sympathy; ill gets miserable.