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chikungunya

Definitions

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

  • noun An acute infectious disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus, characterized by fever, rash, and joint pain, and seen primarily in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.

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

  • noun A viral fever caused by an alphavirus spread by mosquito bites.

Etymologies

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

[Makonde (Bantu language of the region of Tanzania where an epidemic in the 1950s led to the first medical description of the disease) : chi-, sing. n. pref. + -kungunyala, to become contorted, fold up (so called because joint pain causes sufferers from the disease to assume a hunched posture).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Makonde, literally ‘that which bends up’, apparently with reference to the arthritic effects of the disease..

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Examples

  • According to the initial 1955 report about the epidemiology of the disease, the term chikungunya is derived from the Makonde root verb kungunyala, meaning to dry up or become contorted.

    Find Me A Cure 2008

  • A similar but less lethal virus called chikungunya was transmitted in France and Italy, but no cases have been cited in the U.S. from the Asian tiger.

    Attack of the Urban Mosquitoes Aatekah Mir 2011

  • Pharma companies are yet to even develop drugs for diseases such as chikungunya and JE, note industry experts.

    rediff.com 2009

  • Pharma companies are yet to even develop drugs for diseases such as chikungunya and JE, note industry experts.

    rediff.com 2009

  • The word "chikungunya" is thought to derive from description in local dialect of the contorted posture of patients afflicted with the severe joint pain associated with this disease.

    Find Me A Cure 2008

  • Rising cases of dengue fever, chikungunya, bird flu and ebola viruses were registered in many countries in the region.

    Global Voices in English » Southeast Asia: Reactions to the H1N1 virus 2009

  • Also, chikungunya CHICK-en GUN-ya, a little-known but deadly mosquito-transmitted virus, has yet to hit the USA, but could soon make its way here from Africa and Asia, Harrington says.

    Mosquitoes increase disease risk in USA 2011

  • Also, chikungunya CHICK-en GUN-ya, a little-known but deadly mosquito-transmitted virus, has yet to hit the USA, but could soon make its way here from Africa and Asia, Harrington says.

    Mosquitoes increase disease risk in USA 2011

  • Major infectious diseases: degree of risk: high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: chikungunya, dengue fever, and malariaWater

    Indonesia 2009

  • Major Infectious Diseases: Degree of risk: very high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: chikungunya, malaria, plague, and African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) water contact disease: schistosomiasis (2008) Conflict

    Uganda 2009

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Comments

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  • bilby commented on the word chikungunya

    "The epidemic to be described occurred on the Makonde Plateau in the Southern Province of Tanganyika. It was clinically indistinguishable from dengue, if allowance is made for the inherent variability of that disease. Dengue has not been reported from the area before and no inhabitant can remember a similar epidemic. Owing to the distinctive severity of the joint pains and the sudden onset a local name was rapidly applied; the disease became known as chikungunya, meaning- "that which bends up".

    - Robinson Marion, 1955.

    March 23, 2008