Having dull, persistent pain throughout the body or in a specific area, like when you have the flu or overwork your muscles.
From ache + y suffix, where 'ache' comes from Old English 'acan,' a word that's been used for thousands of years to describe that dull, persistent hurt that's different from sharp pain.
Interestingly, 'achy' is one of the few genuinely common words in English that parents use when describing kids' illnesses, yet doctors avoid it in favor of precise medical terms—showing how our casual, descriptive language often better captures how we actually feel than clinical terminology.
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