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ill adjective Of a person or an animal: sharp-tempered, ferocious, vicious, harsh. [DARE labels this usage “chiefly South, South Midland”]

1860 Olmsted Back Country 266 “Ill” is used for “vicious.” “Is your horse ill?” 1886 Smith Southernisms 39 Ill, “vicious,” is common in East Tennessee ... I heard a man in the Smoky Mountains say “Some rattlesnakes are iller’n others”; and another said that “black rattlesnakes are the illest.” 1917 Kephart Word-list 413 = ill-natured, vicious. “That feller’s ill as h[ell].” 1939 Hall Coll (Tow String Creek NC) We understand your ill way of talking. c1960 Wilson Coll = angry, high-tempered; not [used] much for sick till lately. 1985 Irwin Alex Stewart 265 A rattlesnake ain’t so ill as a copperhead. 2003 Gibson Sthn Mt Dialect One personal story I will share with you concerning the words “ill” and “sick.” We were living in Ft. Wayne, Indiana in the late 1950s. My brother and I were attending elementary school. It was during winter and I had a very bad cold and could not go to school one day. The teacher asked my brother about my absence. My brother Donny replied, “He is sick today.” The teacher scolded him for using the word sick. She told him the proper word was ill. She also made a reference to our being from Tennessee and that we would have to learn to use good English. Needless to say this embarrassed my brother very much. Years later I was very happy to find out that the adjective “ill” was used since the 1300s to describe a person or animal as being “bad tempered” and not for being sick. Also that good English used the word “sick” to refer to bad health. The word sick was used long before people ever started saying “ill” to describe someone in bad health.