Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several forms of infectious disease caused by rickettsia, especially those transmitted by fleas, lice, or mites, and characterized generally by severe headache, sustained high fever, depression, delirium, and the eruption of red rashes on the skin.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fever accompanied by great prostration, usually delirium, and an eruption of small reddishpurple spots; ship-fever; jail-fever. Compare typhus fever under fever.

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

  • noun (Med.) A contagious continued fever lasting from two to three weeks, attended with great prostration and cerebral disorder, and marked by a copious eruption of red spots upon the body. Also called jail fever, famine fever, putrid fever, spottled fever, etc. See Jail fever, under jail.

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

  • noun pathology One of several similar diseases, characterised by high recurrent fever, caused by Rickettsiae bacteria. Not to be confused with typhoid fever.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun rickettsial disease transmitted by body lice and characterized by skin rash and high fever

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin tȳphus, from Greek tūphos, stupor arising from a fever, vapor, from tūphein, to smoke.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin typhus, from Ancient Greek τῦφος (typhos, "fever, stupor"), of uncertain origin

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