Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A febrile condition in which there are alternating periods of chills, fever, and sweating. Used chiefly in reference to the fevers associated with malaria.
- n. A chill or fit of shivering.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An acute or violent fever.
- n. Intermittent fever; a malarial fever characterized by regularly returning paroxysms, each in well-developed forms, consisting of three stages marked by successive fits, cold or shivering (the chill), hot or burning, and sweating; chills and fever.
- n. Chilliness; a chill not resulting from disease.
- To cause a shivering in; strike with a cold fit.
Wiktionary
- n. obsolete An acute fever.
- n. pathology An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.
- n. The cold fit or rigor of the intermittent fever; as, fever and ague.
- n. A chill, or state of shaking, as with cold.
- n. obsolete Malaria.
- v. transitive To strike with an ague, or with a cold fit.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete An acute fever.
- n. (Med.) An intermittent fever, attended by alternate cold and hot fits.
- n. The cold fit or rigor of the intermittent fever.
- n. A chill, or state of shaking, as with cold.
- v. To strike with an ague, or with a cold fit.
WordNet 3.0
- n. successive stages of chills and fever that is a symptom of malaria
- n. a fit of shivering or shaking
- n. a mark (') placed above a vowel to indicate pronunciation
Etymologies
- Middle English agu, ague, from Old French and Middle French (fievre) aguë, “acute (fever)” (Modern French fièvre aigüe), from Late Latin (febris) acuta ("acute fever"), from acūtus ("sharp, acute") + febris ("fever"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French (fievre) ague, sharp (fever), from Medieval Latin (febris) acūta, from Latin, feminine of acūtus; see acute. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“An encouraging sign was that his health was none too good; he complained of what he called ague, and I had hopes that he'd be in no shape to start a war that summer.”
“According to the Septuagint, "ague" is "the jaundice," which disorders the eyes and produces great depression of spirits.”
“The brother who has been suffering from ague is probably her elder brother John.”
Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple (1652-54)
“What are commonly termed ague cakes, are diseases of the spleen, and sometimes terminates in Inflammation of the Spleen.”
“She deplores British developers who would have used technical expertise to drain British wetlands for their own material gain, and thus exterminate certain species; she examines that interesting psychological place where scientific method and religious belief collide (when, for instance, the hated Jesuits discover the quinine that could cure the dreaded "ague" -- later determined to be malaria -- but Protestant prejudice prevented its use).”
“Malaria was originally called ague or marsh fever because it emanated from warm-weather swamps.”
“The ague, which is usually accompanied by fever, is of a kind very difficult to shake off, gradually weakening the sufferer till he sinks under its influence; the natives themselves are by no means free from its strokes, to which attacks every stranger who remains for many days in the vicinity of the marshes is liable.”
“I may mention in explanation of this question of mine that, the year before, I had been confined to bed with a sharp attack of a sort of tertian ague, which is the scourge of most tropical countries.”
“He thought that, perhaps, it was going to have some kind of fit, or an attack of ague, which is not an uncommon complaint among animals in his part of the country, and he was preparing to give it a dose of quinine, when suddenly it reared up violently, and before he could stop it, was careering along the road at lightning speed.”
“I went to visit some people at Kensington: Ophy Butler's wife [9] there lies very ill of an ague, which is a very common disease here, and little known in Ireland.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ague’.
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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EN - pronunciation fun
All words of the poem
The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse <...abyss, ache, actual, advice, aerie, age, ague, aisles, alas, alien, alive, allowed and 406 more...
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Tristram Shandy
souse, meet, sententious, propound, boot, casuistry, avoirdupois, akimbo, disport, lenity, succussation, sweetbread and 160 more...
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On with their heads!
Words that make other words with the addition of one letter at the beginning. The resulting words are tagged "behead".
men, his, yes, any, iota, limb, aged, laid, land, lead, read, word and 327 more...
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Words in which "u" is pronounced "yu"
cute, uniform, puny, municipal, butte, fume, perfume, puke, cucumber, huge, demure, cube and 95 more...
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Periodic Table of Cake
I should have known better, but once I got started on this, I realized it’s basically the same thing as Ruzuzu’s list “Let them eat cake”, with less cake.
cheese, ague, almond, alum, pan, ash, beef, tea, Baddeley, daikon, yellow, zebra and 44 more...
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Nouns
weequash, aquabib, selcouth, tyrotoxism, sylph, penchant, adjuration, incantation, hummel, pyromancer, rhabdomancer, hydromancer and 14 more...
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•Unexpected Pronunciation, Now! with ...
Inspired to publicity by the conversation at segway. Thanks, pals!
boatswain, clapboard, waistcoat, victuals, forecastle, solder, colonel, ensign, worcestershire sauce, creatinine, coelacanth, banal and 79 more...
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Words with unusual spellings or pronu...
Herein are listed words with oddball spellings and words whose pronunciation does not reflect the spelling.
eleemosynary, Wednesday, colonel, posslq, zaqqum, qwerty, cinquefoil, qibla(h), minuscule, Cholmondeley, polyphloisboian, ptisan and 67 more...
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Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
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Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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Useful
parkour, diegetic, callipygian, dasypygal, hypnagogic, hypnopompic, antejentacular, postprandial, perspicuity, perspicacity, föhn, traceur and 115 more...
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Professional Scrabble Lexicon (TWL)
A myriad of game-changing words every Scrabble addict must have in his arsenal.
Keep in mind that these are all tried-and-true feasibly playable words selected for their handiness, i.e...paragon, pignora, ganef, suttee, origan, ohia, aioli, abasement, lehr, mho, tallow, harelike and 843 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Twitchy
The (not always so) smoovements; scattered, oscillating, jerky, and unpredictable.
palpitation, scravel, jactitate, pounce, wobble, vibrate, undulate, didder, effleurage, flail, ague, swerve and 169 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ague.

artoparts Achoo! see gesundheit. Feb 26, 2009
qroqqa The modern French spelling is aigu "acute", though English 'ague' is in origin the same word: an acute fever. Sep 3, 2008
rolig I think that in French, the "accent ague" (pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, a'gü) is the same as the acute accent, as in étude. Sep 3, 2008
vanishedone Can this refer to a kind of diacritic, or is WeirdNet acting up again? I can find the ocasional apparently supportive reference, e.g. to 'the umlaut in German or the ague accent in French', but checking other English dictionaries hasn't given me any results. Sep 3, 2008
johnmperry pronounced /'eIgju:/ Jul 24, 2008