Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A disease characterized by the wasting away or atrophy of the body or a part of the body.
- noun Tuberculosis of the lungs. No longer in scientific use.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A disease of the lungs, characterized by progressive consolidation of pulmonary tissue, with breaking down and the formation of cavities.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Med.) A wasting or consumption of the tissues. The term was formerly applied to many wasting diseases, but is now usually restricted to pulmonary phthisis, or consumption. See
consumption . - noun See under
Fibroid .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun archaic An
atrophy of thebody or part of the body, especially pulmonarytuberculosis .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun involving the lungs with progressive wasting of the body
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The term phthisis, consumption, appears first in Greek literature.
WN.com - Articles related to Mekong states to confront China over low river level 2010
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The term phthisis, consumption, appears first in Greek literature.
WN.com - Articles related to How clean is Seattle's drinking water? 2010
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We were accused and convicted of pulmonary phthisis, which is equivalent to the plague in the prejudices regarding contagion entertained by Spanish physicians.
Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician Niecks, Frederick 1888
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At last I discovered a cure for phthisis, which is also known as Phthoe, a disease for many centuries deemed incurable, and I healed many who are alive to this day as easily as I have cured the
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For this kind of phthisis there is no hope of cure.
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why What Medical Writers Say Martha Meir Allen 1890
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When "phthisis" came they all sprang up, and vowed the man who rung
Complete Poetical Works Bret Harte 1869
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All I remember is that it claimed to cure a whole host of ailments, including “phthisis”of which I had never heardand boasted, “Makes children fat as pigs.”
Snake oil comes in all kinds of bottles | The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D. 2009
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Apoplexy is no longer to be feared, but phthisis is there.
Les Miserables 2008
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Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization.
Les Miserables 2008
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The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.
Kindle-licious on Wodehouse’s Psmith: Love is an Umbrella | Spontaneous ∂erivation 2008
chained_bear commented on the word phthisis
"They were deep in two extraordinary, unaccountable and lasting cases of remission in phthisis and tetraplegia when the chief huntsman came to say that Omar Pasha would now receive them."
--P. O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 190
March 25, 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word phthisis
"Sick with phthisis in this drizzling mist, I limp, sniffling, spitting bilic spit, itching livid skin (skin which is tingling with stinging pinpricks)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 55
May 22, 2010
leaden commented on the word phthisis
Phthis is a good find.
(Sorry. It had to be said.)
November 2, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word phthisis
"My patient died at sea and we buried him up there by St. Philip's: poor fellow, he was in the last stages of phthisis."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 37 of the Norton paperback edition
July 5, 2019