Word.ws English Dictionary

French disease

French disease proper noun: syphilis.

Proper noun

the French disease

  1. (dated, euphemistic) Syphilis.
    • Although the Inquisition trials dealing with the French disease are few in number, the cases provide competing opinions about the cause of illness, thereby providing some insights into how the categories of natural and supernatural[…]2010 November 30, L. McGough, Gender, Sexuality, and Syphilis in Early Modern Venice: The Disease that Came to Stay, Springer, →ISBN, page 88

Synonyms of French disease

Origin of French disease

The full explanation of why syphilis was called the French disease as a calque across various languages involves a 1495 outbreak involving French soldiers (more in Wikipedia at History of syphilis); but it is also true that this term is one of several that blame othered ethnicities for distasteful and unseemly things.

Questions about French disease

What does French disease mean?
French disease means syphilis.
What part of speech is French disease?
French disease is a proper noun.

Words near French disease in the dictionary

  1. French decks
  2. French Defence
  3. French Defense
  4. French dip
  5. French dips
  6. French disease
  7. French donut
  8. French donuts
  9. French door
  10. French doors
  11. French drain

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: French disease (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:

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