Word of the Day:
typhus
What It Means
Any of several similar diseases, characterised by high recurrent fever, caused by Rickettsia bacteria. Not to be confused with typhoid fever.
Typhus in Context
“Typhoid and typhus have similar names and symptoms, but are different diseases.”
Did You Know?
From New Latin typhus, from Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos, “fever, stupor”), from τύφω (túphō, “to smoke”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ-, extended form of *dʰew- (“scatter like dust”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: typhus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “typhus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/typhus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.