fever
/ˈfiːvə
/noun
1An abnormally high body temperature, usually accompanied by shivering, headache, and in severe instances, delirium: she had a slight fever [mass noun]: quinine was used to reduce malarial fever...
- Initial signs and symptoms are generalized malaise, chills, fevers, headaches, arthralgias, and a nonproductive cough.
- A person with glandular fever is most infectious when they have a fever (high temperature).
- Call your doctor if your child also gets a fever, diarrhea, headache, or skin rash.
Synonyms
feverishness, high temperature, febricity, febrility;
shivering;
delirium;
Medicine pyrexia
informal temperature, temp
rare calenture
1.1A state of nervous excitement or agitation: I was mystified, and in a fever of expectation...
- When the girls had left, Zara turned to Paz in a fever of agitation.
- Why then, last November, did I find Georgians in such a fever of expectation?
- He shifted in his sleep, his eyes fluttering in the fever of a dream.
1.2 [mass noun, with modifier] The excitement felt by a group of people about a particular public event: election fever reaches its climax tomorrow...
- As election fever mounts, parties are going after one another in wars of words, and lawsuits and counter charges are flying about.
- As election fever heats up, both sides are calling their supporters onto the streets.
- First day of Spring and Sydney catches mainstream federal election fever via sidelines.
Synonyms
ferment, frenzy, furore, ecstasy, rapture, hubbub, hurly-burly
excitement, frenzy, agitation, turmoil, restlessness, unrest, passion
verb [with object] archaic
Bring about a high body temperature or a state of nervous excitement in: a heart which sin has fevered...
- But like boils that erupt at separate places on the skin, they are fevered into being by one invisible short-circuited wiring in the body politic beneath.
- Not since the Pilgrim Fathers boarded a cruise ship for new lives in the redskin-ridden plains of America has such wanderlust fevered the British brain.
Origin
Old English fēfor, from Latin febris; reinforced in Middle English by Old French fievre, also from febris.
Fever has been with us since Anglo-Saxon times, when we borrowed the word from Latin febris. A fever makes you hot and bothered, and the word may ultimately go back to a root meaning ‘to be restless’. In herbal medicine the plant feverfew (Old English) was traditionally seen as a cure for fever. In Latin the name was febrifugia, from febris ‘fever’ and fugare ‘drive away’, from which we get the medical term febrifuge (late 17th century) for a drug that reduces fever. Closely related to fugare is fugere ‘to flee’ found in fugitive (Late Middle English), refuge (Late Middle English), and refugee (late 17th century).