Word.ws English Dictionary

old man's friend

old man's friend proper noun: bacterial pneumonia.

Proper noun

the old man's friend

  1. (informal) Bacterial pneumonia.
    • The "old man's friend," pneumonia, can, in many instances, be turned from the door, and a wide variety of serious diseases, such as pulmonary tuberculosis, salmonellosis, and cholera, can be treated effectively if the right drugs can be got to the right place at the right time.1978, International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases, Inauguration Symposium on Current Trends in Immunology and Genetics and Their Implications for Parasitic Diseases
    • In many instances, it is likely that the old man's friend, pneumonia, may be preventable if nutritional status could be normalized.1998, Howard M. Fillit, Gloria Picariello, Practical Geriatric Assessment, →ISBN, page 63

Origin of old man's friend

Coined by Sir William Osler because it kills the elderly without too much suffering.

Questions about old man's friend

What does old man's friend mean?
Old man's friend means bacterial pneumonia.
What part of speech is old man's friend?
Old man's friend is a proper noun.

Words near old man's friend in the dictionary

  1. old man yells at clouds
  2. old man's beard
  3. old man's beards
  4. old man's drip
  5. old man's eyebrow
  6. old man's friend
  7. old man's pepper
  8. Old Manipuri
  9. Old Marathi
  10. Old Marlburian
  11. Old Marlburians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old man's friend (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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