Word.ws English Dictionary

vampire cough

vampire cough noun: a cough directed into the crook of one's elbow to avoid the spread of germs.

vampire cough: a cough directed into the crook of one's elbow to avoid the spread of germs
Image: One Salient Oversight, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

vampire cough (plural vampire coughs)

  1. (informal) A cough directed into the crook of one's elbow to avoid the spread of germs.

Forms of vampire cough

pluralvampire coughs

Origin of vampire cough

So called because the resulting pose resembles the stock figure of a vampire using his cape over a crooked arm to hide his teeth; see Dracula sneeze.

Questions about vampire cough

What does vampire cough mean?
Vampire cough means a cough directed into the crook of one's elbow to avoid the spread of germs.
What part of speech is vampire cough?
Vampire cough is a noun.
What is the plural of vampire cough?
The plural of vampire cough is vampire coughs.

Words near vampire cough in the dictionary

  1. vampire
  2. vampire bat
  3. vampire bats
  4. vampire bug
  5. vampire bugs
  6. vampire cough
  7. vampire coughs
  8. vampire deer
  9. vampire draw
  10. vampire facial
  11. vampire facials

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vampire cough (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: “vampire cough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vampire_cough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.