Example sentences
tā他shēng生bìng病le了。
He is sick.
wǒ我shēng生bìng病le了，bù不néng能shàng上bān班。
I'm sick, can't go to work.
About this word
生 is "to come into being" and 病 is "illness", so 生病 describes illness arising in you: it names the onset. To say someone is sick right now, Chinese adds 了 and uses 他生病了, where 了 carries the change. The plain state uses 病 as a verb on its own: 他病了, 他不舒服. The same 病 builds 病人 (patient), 病房 (ward), 毛病 (a fault, a bad habit).
The story behind the character
生
A sprout poking out of the ground: the bottom line is the soil, the rest is the shoot coming up. Xu Shen wrote 生, 进也, 象草木生出土上: "to grow, like a plant breaking the surface." So the 生 in 学生 and 先生 started as a blade of grass sprouting.
病
病 is 疒, a person lying on a sickbed, with 丙 supplying the sound. That 疒 shape, a body propped against a bed under a roof, sits on the left of every illness character. Xu Shen separated the two old words for being sick: 疾 was the ordinary ailment, and 病 was 疾加也, the illness getting worse. So 生病 is the serious kind.