Word.ws English Dictionary

king's evil

king's evil noun: scrofula.

Noun

king's evil (uncountable)

  1. (archaic) scrofula
    • Suppose the person the matter is taken from, has the king's evil, the pox, madness, or some other inveterate disease — I am sure the inoculator can give no reason why it should not convey one distemper as well as the other.1806, Robert Willan, On vaccine inoculation

Origin of king's evil

From a popular belief that the King could cure the disease by touching the sufferer.

Questions about king's evil

What does king's evil mean?
King's evil means scrofula.
What part of speech is king's evil?
King's evil is a noun.

Words near king's evil in the dictionary

  1. King's Cross
  2. king's cushion
  3. King's Daughters
  4. King's Dyke
  5. King's English
  6. king's evil
  7. king's finger
  8. king's fingers
  9. King's Gambit
  10. King's Hall
  11. King's Heath

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: king's evil (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: “king's evil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/king%27s_evil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.