Word.ws English Dictionary

ague

/ˈeɪ.ɡju/

ague noun: an acute fever.

Noun

ague (countable and uncountable, plural agues)

  1. (obsolete) An acute fever.
  2. An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.
    • He had to capture some character and get out of that rest room before his ague got so bad that the sergeant had to carry him to and from the booth every day.1963 (date written), John Kennedy Toole, chapter 8, in A Confederacy of Dunces, London: Penguin Books, published 1980 (1981 printing), →ISBN, page 163
    • He shivered all the while, so violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.
      “I think you have got the ague,” said I.
      “I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.
      “It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on...1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter III, in Great Expectations […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, pages 35–36
  3. The cold fit or rigor of an intermittent fever.
    • fever and ague
  4. A chill, or state of shaking, as with cold.
    • November 23, 1698, John Dryden, letter to Mrs Stewart
      I ’scap’d with one cold fit of an ague
  5. (obsolete) Malaria.
    • Where I’m from, people have learned that mosquitoes carry ague.1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred

Verb

ague (third-person singular simple present agues, present participle aguing, simple past and past participle agued)

  1. (transitive) To strike with an ague, or with a cold fit.

ague meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Kannada

ague in Tamil

மலேரியா, குளிர்காய்ச்சல், முறைக்காய்ச்சல், மலம்பனி, வலிப்பு

ague in Urdu

کپکپی والا بخار, ملیریا بخار

ague in Kannada

ಚಳಿಬಿಸುಪು

Forms of ague

Noun
pluralagues
Verb
third-person singular presentagues
present participleaguing
past participleagued
pastagued

Origin of ague

From Middle English agu, ague, borrowed from Middle French (fievre) aguë, “acute (fever)” (Modern French fièvre aiguë), from Late Latin (febris) acuta (“acute fever”), from Latin acūtus (“sharp, acute”) + febris (“fever”). Doublet of acute.

Words formed from ague

Questions about ague

What does ague mean?
Ague means an acute fever.
What is ague in Tamil?
Ague in Tamil is மலேரியா, குளிர்காய்ச்சல், முறைக்காய்ச்சல். See Ague meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ague?
Ague can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce ague?
Ague is pronounced /ˈeɪ.ɡju/.
What is the plural of ague?
The plural of ague is agues.

Words near ague in the dictionary

  1. Agudas
  2. Agudelo
  3. Agudelos
  4. agudization
  5. Agudong
  6. ague
  7. agued
  8. Agueda
  9. aguelike
  10. agueproof
  11. Aguero

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ague (page history and authors); ague (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ague (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ague (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ague.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ague.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ague. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.