Ill, adv. In a ill manner; badly; weakly.
How ill this taper burns! Shak.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay. Goldsmith.
☞ Ill, like above, well, and so, is used before many participal adjectives, in its usual adverbal sense. When the two words are used as an epithet preceding the noun qualified they are commonly hyphened; in other cases they are written separatively; as, an ill-educated man; he was ill educated; an ill-formed plan; the plan, however ill formed, was acceptable. Ao, also, the following: ill-affected or ill affected, ill-arranged or ill arranged, ill-assorted or ill assorted, ill-boding or ill boding, ill-bred or ill bred, ill-conditioned, ill-conducted, ill-considered, ill-devised, ill-disposed, ill-doing, ill-fairing, ill-fated, ill-favored, ill-featured, ill-formed, ill-gotten, ill-imagined, ill-judged, ill-looking, ill-mannered, ill-matched, ill-meaning, ill-minded, ill-natured, ill-omened, ill-proportioned, ill-provided, ill-required, ill-sorted, ill-starred, ill-tempered, ill-timed, ill-trained, ill-used, and the like.