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• Typhoid Mary
  Typhoid Mary

  noun

  a carrier or transmitter of anything undesirable, harmful, or catastrophic.
• typhoid Mary
  typhoid Mary

  A carrier or spreader of misfortune, as in I swear he's a typhoid Mary; everything at the office has gone wrong since he was hired. This expression alludes to a real person, Mary Manson, who died in 1938. An Irish-born servant, she transmitted typhoid fever to others and was referred to as “typhoid Mary” from the early 1900s. The term was broadened to other carriers of calamity in the mid-1900s.

Typhoid Mary

American  

noun

1. a carrier or transmitter of anything undesirable, harmful, or catastrophic.

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Typhoid Mary ¹ Cultural  

1. A cook who carried typhoid fever and passed it on to many people in and around New York City in the early twentieth century.

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Typhoid Mary ² Cultural  

1. A person likely to cause a disaster; from Mary Mallen, an Irish woman in the United States who was discovered to be a carrier of typhoid fever.

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typhoid Mary Idioms  

1. A carrier or spreader of misfortune, as in I swear he's a typhoid Mary; everything at the office has gone wrong since he was hired. This expression alludes to a real person, Mary Manson, who died in 1938. An Irish-born servant, she transmitted typhoid fever to others and was referred to as “typhoid Mary” from the early 1900s. The term was broadened to other carriers of calamity in the mid-1900s.

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The term is often applied to the carrier of a contagious disease, or, more generally, to anyone who brings bad luck: “The last three insurance companies I had policies with folded. I feel like Typhoid Mary.”

Etymology

Origin of Typhoid Mary

First recorded in 1905–10; so called after Mary Mallon (1869–1938), Irish-born cook in the U.S., who was found to be a typhoid carrier

Example Sentences

It’s a particularly exuberant tortoise nicknamed Typhoid Mary, who got the nickname because she harbors a contagious bacteria that causes upper respiratory tract disease.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 21, 2024

“At the beginning, really, we were just going about living our lives as normal people, and all of a sudden, we were sort of Typhoid Mary in Newsweek magazine,” he said.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 9, 2022

What have we gotten wrong about "Typhoid Mary," about Gaëtan Dugas, and about the idea of "Patient Zero" in general?

From Salon • Jan. 24, 2022

“If the nurse’s aide is not immunized, she can be a Typhoid Mary, if you will, bringing disease to many who are immuno-compromised,” he said.

From Washington Post • Mar. 5, 2019

Such diagrams as the famous health tract "A Day in the Life of a Fly" or the story of Typhoid Mary are helpful in establishing how closely a community is bound together.

From College Teaching Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College by Klapper, Paul