Definitions

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

  • noun A febrile condition in which there are alternating periods of chills, fever, and sweating. Used chiefly in reference to the fevers associated with malaria.
  • noun A chill or fit of shivering.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cause a shivering in; strike with a cold fit.
  • noun An acute or violent fever.
  • noun Intermittent fever; a malarial fever characterized by regularly returning paroxysms, each in well-developed forms, consisting of three stages marked by successive fits, cold or shivering (the chill), hot or burning, and sweating; chills and fever.
  • noun Chilliness; a chill not resulting from disease.

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

  • noun obsolete An acute fever.
  • noun (Med.) An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.
  • noun The cold fit or rigor of the intermittent fever.
  • noun A chill, or state of shaking, as with cold.
  • noun an enlargement of the spleen produced by ague.
  • noun a solution of the arsenite of potassa used for ague.
  • noun a fit of the ague.
  • noun a spell or charm against ague.
  • noun [Obs.] the sassafras, -- sometimes so called from the use of its root formerly, in cases of ague.
  • transitive verb To strike with an ague, or with a cold fit.

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

  • noun obsolete An acute fever.
  • noun pathology An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.
  • noun The cold fit or rigor of the intermittent fever; as, fever and ague.
  • noun A chill, or state of shaking, as with cold.
  • noun obsolete Malaria.
  • verb transitive To strike with an ague, or with a cold fit.

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

  • noun successive stages of chills and fever that is a symptom of malaria
  • noun a fit of shivering or shaking
  • noun a mark (') placed above a vowel to indicate pronunciation

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old French (fievre) ague, sharp (fever), from Medieval Latin (febris) acūta, from Latin, feminine of acūtus; see acute.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English agu, ague, from Old French and Middle French (fievre) aguë, “acute (fever)” (Modern French fièvre aigüe), from Late Latin (febris) acuta ("acute fever"), from acūtus ("sharp, acute") + febris ("fever").

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Examples

Comments

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  • pronounced /'eIgju:/

    July 24, 2008

  • Can this refer to a kind of diacritic, or is WeirdNet acting up again? I can find the ocasional apparently supportive reference, e.g. to 'the umlaut in German or the ague accent in French', but checking other English dictionaries hasn't given me any results.

    September 3, 2008

  • I think that in French, the "accent ague" (pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, a'gü) is the same as the acute accent, as in étude.

    September 3, 2008

  • The modern French spelling is aigu "acute", though English 'ague' is in origin the same word: an acute fever.

    September 3, 2008

  • Achoo! see gesundheit.

    February 26, 2009