fever swamp
fever swamp noun: an area of stagnant water and hot temperatures that acts as a breeding ground for disease vectors such as mosquitos.
Noun
fever swamp (plural fever swamps)
- An area of stagnant water and hot temperatures that acts as a breeding ground for disease vectors such as mosquitos.
- Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in the morning sun.1901, Winston Churchill, The Crisis
- In the evenings he sat on deck with a lantern, and men and women gathered round to listen to him telling tales about fever swamps, elephant hunts and mountains infested with leopard.2012, Jennifer McVeigh, The Fever Tree, →ISBN
- A group of political extremists or an area that is dominated by them.
- Only a few years earlier, the neocons had been denouncing them as coming from "the fever swamps", in the words of Decter.2010, Nathan Abrams, Norman Podhoretz and Commentary Magazine, →ISBN
- Rafferty was a florid public speaker and aspiring demagogue who emerged from what even a conservative like William Rusher described as “the fever swamp of rightist kookery in southern California.2012, Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, →ISBN
- A set of extreme and crazy political positions.
- The Right's ever-vigilant Slogan Division focus-grouped a winner on immigration: "No amnesty for lawbreakers." No "shamnesty." And that is where the Right made its stand, right in the middle of the Minutemen fever swamps.2008, Arianna Huffington, Right is Wrong, →ISBN, page 236
- It is worth it, before making a final comment on the grander points involved, to climb out of the polemical fever swamps and look with a little detachment on the purely economic question.2012, William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom', →ISBN
fever swamp meaning in Tamil
fever swamp in Tamil
- தொற்றுக் காய்ச்சல்
Examples of fever swamp in a sentence
- Into the fever swamps, they marched us . . .2016, Ralph Ellison, John Callahan, Juneteenth, →ISBN:
- The neoconservatives, who only a few years before had been denouncing the far-right conservatism of "the fever swamps" (Midge Decter's term), had caught a bad case of far-right fever themselves.2013, Michael Lind, Up from Conservatism, →ISBN, page 98:
- But Obama's plunge into the fever swamp of birtherism was just the latest detour on what had already been a long, strange trip—with many miles still to go.2013, John Heilemann, Mark Halperin, Double Down, →ISBN, page 12:
Forms of fever swamp
| plural | fever swamps |
|---|---|
| alternative form | fever-swamp |
Origin of fever swamp
The original term sprang from the belief that the swamp itself caused illnesses such as malaria and cholera, before the role of disease vectors was understood. The political use of the term is generally attributed to the neoconservative journalist Midge Decter, as a metaphor for right-wing political extremists as breeding ground for crazy ideas.
Questions about fever swamp
- What does fever swamp mean?
- Fever swamp means an area of stagnant water and hot temperatures that acts as a breeding ground for disease vectors such as mosquitos.
- What is fever swamp in Tamil?
- Fever swamp in Tamil is தொற்றுக் காய்ச்சல். See Fever swamp meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use fever swamp in a sentence?
- Into the fever swamps, they marched us . . .
- What part of speech is fever swamp?
- Fever swamp is a noun.
- What is the plural of fever swamp?
- The plural of fever swamp is fever swamps.
Words near fever swamp in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fever swamp (page history and authors); fever swamp (Tamil 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.
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Cite this entry: “fever swamp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fever_swamp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.