lurgy
/ˈləːɡi
/noun (plural lurgies) British humorous
An unspecified or indeterminate illness: I had caught the dreaded lurgy...
- Good thing I did all that Arsenal stuff yesterday, I'm lumbered with the lurgy and feel like I have a sponge for a brain.
- He gets whisked off to a badly-run NHS hospital, where a scabby and underpaid nurse who is ill because she can't afford blankets sneezes all over Bob's wound, giving him a nasty lurgy, and he dies.
- I've woken up feeling thick-headed, and since I know what a sick building I work in, and since everyone else has had it before me, I'm taking the day off before the lurgy gets me.
Origin
1950s (originally spelled lurgi): used in the British radio series The Goon Show and probably invented by its writers, though possibly from an English dialect term.