ague
Americannoun
-
agues
plural
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Pathology. a malarial fever characterized by regularly returning paroxysms, marked by successive cold, hot, and sweating fits.
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a fit of fever or shivering or shaking chills, accompanied by malaise, pains in the bones and joints, etc.; chill.
noun
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a fever with successive stages of fever and chills esp when caused by malaria
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a fit of shivering
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of ague
1250–1300; Middle English < Middle French, short for fievre ague acute fever < Latin febris acūta
Explanation
When people got sick with fever and chills back in colonial times, they called their illness ague. Today most people would refer to ague as malaria. Starting in the 13th century, feverish illness was named ague, from the Medieval Latin acuta, "sharp fever," and its root, meaning "sharp." The word began to refer specifically to malaria, an infectious disease spread by mosquitoes, as early as the late 14th century. Colonial doctors often attributed cases of ague to "bad air," and the illness reached epidemic levels several times. It was eliminated as a public health issue in the U.S. around 1950, although malaria is still a problem in other parts of the world.
Vocabulary lists containing ague
The Tempest
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Poe's Favorite Words, collected by Charles Harrington Elster
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Scrabble: Four-Letter Words with 3 Vowels
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Added to that, they ague their aircraft are quiet and emissions-free.
From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2022
So while Shakespeare had his "canker in the bud", voguish words such as palsy, purge, apoplexy, ague and balm were used by Donne repeatedly to make his work sound cutting-edge.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 24, 2012
This too shall pass, when the final games ends; and World Cup fever will again abate into soccer ague.
From Time ● Jul. 10, 2010
“If I didn’t stay to see some of the fight,” she tells us, “I would forever be filled with the echoes of regret and the ague of remorse.”
From Washington Post
On the seventh day the ague came upon him again, but he did not stop work.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
Political analyst Mr Lawal said the president should appoint the best person for the job, irrespective of their ethnic origin – and agues that this is what Tinubu is doing.
From BBC ● May 26, 2025
Today, winter as well as summer, he bathes his feet in cold water every morning, a regimen he credits with making him impervious to colds and agues.
From Time Magazine Archive
In 1763, an English clergyman, Edward Stone, found that willow tea eased the agues of malaria.
From Time Magazine Archive
She charmed warts and cured agues, and was even held by many to be somewhat of a witch.
From The Jolliest Term on Record A Story of School Life by Angela Brazil
A second property attributed to it was that of stopping diarrhœa; a third, that of cutting short agues.
From New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies: Papers by Many Writers by Edward Pollock Anshutz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
