measles

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An acute, contagious viral disease, usually occurring in childhood and characterized by eruption of red spots on the skin, fever, and catarrhal symptoms. Also called rubeola.
2. n. Black measles.
3. n. Any of several other diseases, especially German measles, that cause similar but milder symptoms.
4. n. A disease of cattle and swine caused by tapeworm larvae.
5. n. A plant disease, usually caused by fungi, that produces minute spots on leaves and stems.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A contagious disease of man, with an incubation period of about nine or ten days, and a period of invasion of about three or four days, in which there are pyrexia and rapid pulse, inflammation of the mucous membrane of the eyes and upper air-passages, and bronchitis, followed by an eruption of small rose-colored papulæ, which arrange themselves in curvilinear forms. The period of eruption usually lasts about four days. The eruption is succeeded by a bran-like desquamation. The poison is conveyed directly from the patient through the air and by fomites. It is given off in the period of invasion as well as in later periods. Also called rubeola and morbilli.
2. n. An old name for several diseases of swine or sheep, caused by the scolex or measle of a tapeworm, and characterized by reddish watery pustules on the skin, cough, feverishness, and discharge at the nostrils.—3. A disease of plants; any blight of leaves appearing in spots, whether due to the attacks of insects or to the action of weather. See measle, 1.
3. n. See measle. 2.
4. n. In photography, a defect in silver-printing consisting in semi-opaque blotches caused by imperfect fixation by the insoluble silver hyposulphite visible when the prints are held to the light. In time these spots become yellow.
5. n. Same as scarlet fever.

Wiktionary

1. n. Rubeola, an acute highly contagious disease, (often of childhood) caused by a virus, featuring a spreading red skin rash, fever, runny nose, cough and red eyes
2. n. Any of several other similar diseases, such as German measles.
3. n. Plural form of measle.
4. n. Leprosy.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Leprosy; also, a leper.
2. n. A contagious viral febrile disorder commencing with catarrhal symptoms, and marked by the appearance on the third day of an eruption of distinct red circular spots, which coalesce in a crescentic form, are slightly raised above the surface, and after the fourth day of the eruption gradually decline; rubeola. It is a common childhood disease.
3. n. A disease of cattle and swine in which the flesh is filled with the embryos of different varieties of the tapeworm.
4. n. A disease of trees.
5. n. The larvæ of any tapeworm (Tænia) in the cysticerus stage, when contained in meat. Called also bladder worms.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an acute and highly contagious viral disease marked by distinct red spots followed by a rash; occurs primarily in children