Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A scurfy eruption.
  • To cover with morphew.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A scurfy eruption.
  • transitive verb obsolete To cover with a morphew.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a blemish or mark on the skin
  • noun blisters caused by scurvy

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From mediæval Latin morphea, perhaps from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphē, "form, shape").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word morphew.

Examples

  • In a scar after a wound the integument is only opake; but in these blotches, which are called morphew and freckles, the small vessels seem to have become inactive with some of the serum of the blood stagnating in them, from whence their colour.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • When melancholy gets out at the superficies of the skin, or settles breaking out in scabs, leprosy, morphew, or is purged by stools, or by the urine, or that the spleen is enlarged, and those varices appear, the disease is dissolved.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • Oh, and further to Lisa's comment, neither is a morphew a "scurvy blister".

    languagehat.com: OLD DISEASE NAMES. 2004

  • -- There is nothing valiant or solid to be hoped for from such as are always kempt and perfumed, and every day smell of the tailor; the exceedingly curious that are wholly in mending such an imperfection in the face, in taking away the morphew in the neck, or bleaching their hands at midnight, gumming and bridling their beards, or making the waist small, binding it with hoops, while the mind runs at waste; too much pickedness is not manly.

    Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems Ben Jonson 1605

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.