Word.ws English Dictionary

morbs

morbs noun: physical or mental illness or infirmity.

Noun (1)

morbs pl (plural only)

  1. (obsolete, plural, plural-only) Physical or mental illness or infirmity.
    • For in veracity these Times denote
      Morbs to the Sane, and Obits to th' Ægrote;
      And alterate the suavest Pulchritude
      To the Complection of its native Mud.1653, Francis Rabelais [i.e., François Rabelais], translated by [Thomas Urquhart, Peter Anthony Motteux], “An Epistle by Pantagruel’s Lymosin, Grand Excoriator of the Latiale Tongue, mention’d Book...
    • […] and what herbes or plants soever were preservative against the Scotoma, Oedema, Lithiasis, Paralysis, Celphalgia, Lycanthropia; all diseases, Ulcers, Morbs or Contagions wheresoever or howsoever arising […]a. 1673, Blasius Multibibus (Richard Brathwait), The Smoaking Age or The Life and Death of Tobacco, page 103
  2. (archaic, informal, plural, plural-only) One who suffers from melancholia or depression.
    • As a whole, New York audiences are the most responsive because they are made up largely of the happy, care-free transients, the human beings who come to New York to laugh. […] They are not wise as the morbs are, they are just happy, and natural and alive.1919, Bert Williams, quotee, “Keeping up with the new laughs”, in Theatre Magazine, page 346
  3. (archaic, informal, plural, plural-only) A state of melancholy, sadness, ennui.
    • For whatever reasons, an astonishing assortment of English idioms (some dating to Elizabethan times) existed in the nineteenth century to literally give sorrow words: one spoke of the “blackdogs”, the “blue devils”, the “dismals”, the “dumps”, the “hyps”, the “mopes”, the “morbs”, the “mulligrubs”...[1973, Stefan Grossman, Country Blues Songbook, page 16
    • ‘Oh Tess,’ giggled Kate, ‘you’re always such a tonic. I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve got a severe case of the “morbs”.’1995, Patricia Harding, A Woman of Africa, page 159

Noun (2) capitalized: MORBs

MORBs

  1. (plural) plural of MORB

Origin of morbs

Perhaps from morbid, ultimately from Latin morbus (“malady (of body or mind), distress”).

Questions about morbs

What does morbs mean?
Morbs means physical or mental illness or infirmity.
What part of speech is morbs?
Morbs is a noun.

Words near morbs in the dictionary

  1. morbimortality
  2. Morborne
  3. morbose
  4. morbosities
  5. morbosity
  6. morbs
  7. morbus
  8. morbus coxarius
  9. morbus cyclometricus
  10. morbus Dupuytren
  11. morbuses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: morbs (page history and authors); MORBs (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-morbs.wav.

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