Word.ws English Dictionary

water sickness

water sickness noun: dropsy.

Noun

water sickness (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, rare) Dropsy.
    • Water sickness, or general dropsy, also frequently takes place among sheep.1809, Arthur Edmondston, A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands
    • For water sickness (dropsy), or stones in the bladder, the cure was elder (sambucus, B.P.), for which also it is claimed “all things which are generated on a man's body to loathe, it thoroughly will heal.”1908, British Medical Journal, page 999

Origin of water sickness

From Middle English watersiknesse, wæterseocnesse, from Old English wætersēocnes (“dropsy”), equivalent to water + sickness.

Questions about water sickness

What does water sickness mean?
Water sickness means dropsy.
What part of speech is water sickness?
Water sickness is a noun.

Words near water sickness in the dictionary

  1. water seeks its level
  2. water seeks its own level
  3. water shortage
  4. water shrew
  5. water shrews
  6. water sickness
  7. water sign
  8. water signs
  9. water silk
  10. water silks
  11. water skater

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: water sickness (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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