Virtuous English AcademyHealth & Body — A2 English Vocabulary
This A2 vocabulary list gathers 30 elementary English words about health & body — staying well, illness and visiting the doctor. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using health & body words in English
Health vocabulary is where English articles behave least predictably, and no amount of logic will sort it out — a headache takes a, flu takes nothing, and a cold takes a again. These have to be learned as whole phrases. The other thing worth knowing before you start is that several words here are specifically British: a chemist is where you collect your medicine, and ill is used where Americans would say sick.
What to watch out for
Illnesses and their articles have to be memorised
You have a headache, a cough, a cold, a fever and a temperature — all with a. But you have flu, have toothache and have backache with nothing at all in British English. Americans add the to flu. There is no rule underneath this, so treat each one as a fixed phrase and learn it with the article attached.
Pain, ache and hurt are three different words
Pain is the noun for the sensation: I have a pain in my back. An ache is a duller pain that lasts, and it fuses onto body parts — headache, stomach ache, earache. Hurt is the verb you need most: My leg hurts, or with a person as subject, I hurt my leg. Note that My leg is hurting me is not how English says it.
Recover from, and a patient is a person
You recover from an illness — the preposition is fixed, and get better is the everyday alternative. Watch patient, which is a noun for a person receiving treatment as well as an adjective meaning calm; the two are unrelated in use. And in Britain you make an appointment with a doctor, go to the surgery to see them, and take the prescription to a chemist, which Americans call a drugstore or pharmacy.
Words learners mix up
Three tables covering the three things you actually have to say at a doctor’s desk: what happened to you, what you were given for it, and how you normally look after yourself.
Words for something going wrong
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| injury | Physical harm from an accident or from sport. Countable, and the everyday verb for causing it is hurt. | He is out of the team with a knee injury. |
| wound | An open cut in the skin, usually deep. Said woond — it does not rhyme with the past of wind. | The nurse cleaned and covered the wound. |
| illness | Being unwell from disease rather than from damage. Countable for a named one, uncountable in absent through illness. | She was off work with a long illness. |
| sore | An adjective for a part of the body that hurts when you touch or use it. Very common with throats, eyes and muscles. | I have a sore throat this morning. |
The useful split is where it came from: an injury comes from something that happened to your body, an illness from something inside it, and only the second can be caught from another person. Sore is the odd one out because it is an adjective — my legs are sore — and it describes a mild lasting ache rather than a single sharp pain.
What you are given and what you take
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| medicine | The general word for anything taken to get better. Uncountable here, so take your medicine and never a medicine. | This medicine should help the cough. |
| tablet | One small hard piece of medicine that you swallow. Countable, and this is the British word for it. | Take two tablets after food. |
| treatment | The whole course of care for a condition, running over days or months. Normally uncountable. | The treatment lasts six weeks. |
| checkup | A routine appointment to confirm nothing is wrong, when you are not ill at all. Often written check-up. | I go for a dental checkup twice a year. |
Americans say pill where the British say tablet, and both say capsule for the ones in a coloured shell. The verb matters more than any of them: you take medicine — never drink it or eat it — and the same verb covers tablets, vitamins and drops.
Looking after yourself
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| healthy | In good health, or good for you. It describes both people and food, which not every language allows. | Walking to work is a healthy habit. |
| diet | Everything a person normally eats. Only in on a diet does it mean deliberately eating less. | A balanced diet includes plenty of vegetables. |
| exercise | Physical activity done for fitness. Uncountable in this sense: get some exercise, never an exercise. | She does half an hour of exercise before work. |
| weight | How heavy you are. Uncountable, and it lives inside two phrases: put on and lose. | He has lost a lot of weight this year. |
Diet is the false friend to watch. The Japanese diet is very healthy is a statement about what people in Japan normally eat, not about slimming, and only go on a diet carries the other meaning. Exercise becomes countable in exactly one place — the numbered exercises in a textbook — which is a different word doing a different job.
Collocations that sound natural
Health talk runs on a small number of fixed pairs, and these are the ones you need at a reception desk, on the phone to work, or when somebody asks how you are.
appointment
make an appointmentcancel an appointmenta hospital appointmentan appointment at four
The verb is make — not take and not do — and the person takes with: an appointment with Dr Shah.
exercise
get some exercisetake regular exercisegentle exercisedo exercise
All four are natural. Take exercise is slightly more formal and distinctly British; get some exercise is what people say out loud.
weight
put on weightlose weightwatch your weighta healthy weight
The opposite of lose weight is put on weight or gain weight. Never win weight, and never take weight.
breath
take a deep breathout of breathhold your breathshort of breath
The noun is breath and rhymes with death; the verb is breathe, with an extra e, and rhymes with leave. One letter, two sounds.
stress
under stressdeal with stressstress at workcause stress
Uncountable, so there is no stresses. The adjectives divide the usual way: a person is stressed and a job is stressful.
blood
give blooda blood testhigh blood pressurelose blood
Uncountable, and it rhymes with mud rather than with food — one of the least predictable spellings in the language.
Where each word belongs
One of these is a British word that means two different things, two exist only inside a fixed situation, and one is the word you need when you feel unwell but nothing actually hurts.
- surgeryBritish · two meaningsIn Britain the surgery is the building where your family doctor works — I am going to the surgery — and it is also the operation a hospital carries out. Americans use it only for the second and call the building the doctor’s office.
- ambulanceEmergency · fixedThe verb is call: call an ambulance. The UK number is 999, and 112 works across Europe. You do not take one the way you take a taxi — you go in an ambulance, or you are taken by ambulance.
- dizzySpeech · with <em>feel</em>The frame is I feel dizzy, meaning the room seems to turn. English prefers feel plus an adjective for any symptom with no location: I feel dizzy, I feel weak. The noun dizziness belongs to leaflets rather than to conversation.
- sneezeEveryday · with a ritualWhen somebody sneezes, English speakers say Bless you and the person answers Thank you. This is expected rather than optional, and unusually for British politeness there is no alternative wording.
- feverWritten · medicalDoctors and leaflets say fever; in conversation British people say a temperature — she has got a temperature. Both describe the same thing, and if you do use the word, the collocation is a high fever.
- cureStrong · results onlyA cure ends the problem completely, which makes it a much bigger claim than treatment. In ordinary speech people say get better and make you feel better; keep this word for conditions that genuinely have one.
Sentences to try
Four frames for describing how you feel. Change the body part and the illness so they match a time you were actually unwell.
- I have a bad headache and a fever.
- My throat hurts when I swallow.
- I have an appointment with the doctor at four.
- She is starting to recover from the flu.
Questions about health & body vocabulary
Do I say "I have flu" or "I have the flu"?
British English says I have flu with no article at all; American English says I have the flu. Both are correct in their own variety and both are understood everywhere. What you should not say is I have a flu. Compare this with a cold, which does take a in every variety — I have a cold — and you can see why these phrases are better memorised whole than worked out from a rule.
What is the difference between ill and sick?
In British English ill is the normal word for being unwell, and sick most often means about to vomit: I feel sick means your stomach is turning. In American English sick covers both. There is one British phrase that breaks the pattern — off sick, meaning absent from work because of illness — and a sick child is perfectly normal before a noun. As a learner of British English, use ill after the verb and you will not go wrong.
How do I say what hurts in English?
The simplest frame is the body part plus hurts: My back hurts. For something sharper, use I have a pain in my… — and note that it is in, not on. For the dull lasting kind, English fuses the word ache onto the body part: headache, stomach ache, toothache, earache, backache. If you caused the injury yourself, the verb becomes transitive: I hurt my ankle playing football.