English

Noun

ague ‎(plural agues)

1. (obsolete) An acute fever.
   • Brenning agues. —P. Plowman.
2. (pathology) An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.
3. The cold fit or rigor of the intermittent fever; as, fever and ague.
4. A chill, or state of shaking, as with cold.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

5. (obsolete) Malaria.

Usage notes

The pronunciation /ˈeɪɡ/ is a common pronunciation by people to whom this is a book word (a word one learns by reading and has never heard spoken). /ˈeɪ.ɡju/ is the standard pronunciation.

Quotations

• 1810: Lord Byron, "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos"

  'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
  Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you!
  He lost his labour, I my jest:
  For he was drowned, and I've the ague

• 1852: Susanna Moodie, "Roughing it in the Bush: or, Forest Life in Canada"

  'Ague and lake fever had attacked our new settlement. The men in the shanty were all down with it, and my husband was confined to his bed on each alternate day, unable to raise hand or foot, and raving in the delirium of the fever.'

• 1867: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1867 Edition, chapter III.

  He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.
  "I think you have got the ague," said I.
  "I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he.
  "It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too."

• 1969: John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, p. 200.

  He had to capture some character and get out of that rest room before his ague got so bad that the sergeant had to carry him to and from the booth every day.

Related terms

• acute
• ague cake
• ague tree

Translations

See also

• fainaigue

Verb

ague ‎(third-person singular simple present agues, present participle aguing, simple past and past participle agued)

1. (transitive) To strike with an ague, or with a cold fit.

Translations

Anagrams

• gaue