typhoid fever

British  

noun

1. Also called: enteric fever.  an acute infectious disease characterized by high fever, rose-coloured spots on the chest or abdomen, abdominal pain, and occasionally intestinal bleeding. It is caused by the bacillus Salmonella typhosa ingested with food or water

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typhoid fever Scientific  

/ tī′foid′ /

1. A life-threatening infectious disease caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi and transmitted through contaminated food and water. It is characterized by high fever, intestinal bleeding, diarrhea, and skin rash.

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typhoid fever Cultural  

1. An acute and highly contagious disease transmitted by food or water contaminated with a kind of bacterium. The disease, which is often fatal, is characterized by high fever, pain in the abdomen, and bleeding in the intestines.

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Etymology

Origin of typhoid fever

C19: from _typhus + _-oid ; so called because the symptoms resemble those of typhus

Example Sentences

Suddenly she was a single mother of two daughters, mourning the deaths of her husband from typhoid fever and their first daughter, who died of brain fever.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 27, 2026

When Willie Lincoln, the third son of President Lincoln, died at age 11 of typhoid fever, he was interred in a mausoleum in Oak Hill Cemetery.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 14, 2025

Cholera, dysentery and typhoid fever are no longer health burdens in the U.S. thanks to a robust water treatment system.

From Salon • Jan. 27, 2025

Showers are being postponed, and children with only dirty water to drink are being hospitalized with typhoid fever.

From New York Times • Mar. 31, 2024

Two years later, on Valentine’s Day 1884, twenty-five-year-old Roosevelt was ravaged by grief again when his mother, Martha, died of typhoid fever, a type of bacterial infection.

From "Death on the River of Doubt" by Samantha Seiple