Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Acute inflammation of the tonsils and the surrounding tissue, often leading to the formation of an abscess.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Tonsillitis; specifically, a deep suppurative tonsillitis.
Wiktionary
- n. pathology A painful pus-filled inflammation or abscess of the tonsils and surrounding tissues, usually a complication of tonsillitis, caused by bacterial infection and often accompanied by fever.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) An inflammation of the throat, or parts adjacent, especially of the fauces or tonsils, attended by considerable swelling, painful and impeded deglutition, and accompanied by inflammatory fever. It sometimes creates danger of suffocation; -- called also
squinancy , andsquinzey .
WordNet 3.0
- n. a painful pus filled inflammation of the tonsils and surrounding tissues; usually a complication of tonsillitis
Etymologies
- From Old French quinencie, from Medieval Latin quinancia, from Ancient Greek κυνάγχη ("canine quinsy"), from κύων ("dog") + ἄγχω ("throttle"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Medieval Latin quinancia and Old French quinancie, both from Greek kunankhē, dog quinsy, dog-collar : kuōn, kun-, dog; see kwon- in Indo-European roots + ankhein, to squeeze; see angh- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“For the Church of the Badia of Florence he made a very beautiful S. Jerome; and he began a Deposition from the Cross for the high-altar of the Friars of the Nunziata, but only finished the figures in the upper half of the picture, for, being overcome by a most cruel fever and by that contraction of the throat that is commonly known as quinsy, he died in a few days at the age of forty-five.”
“The name Prunella (which belongs more rightly to another herb) has been given to the Sanicle, perhaps, through its having been originally known as Brunella, Brownwort, both because of the brown colour of its spikes, and from its being supposed to cure the disease called in Germany _die braune_, a kind of quinsy; on the doctrine of signatures, because the corolla resembles a throat with swollen glands.”
“He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech.”
“Next day, I was in my surgery, listening patiently to an elderly lady from the village, some relation to the soup cook, who was rather garrulously detailing her daughter-in-law's bout with the morbid sore throat that theoretically had something to do with her current complaint of quinsy, though I couldn't at the moment see the connection.”
“There was a child of my own, and he but a year and a-half old, and he got a quinsy and a choking in the throat and I was holding him in my arms beside the fire, and all in a minute he died.”
“He was sick with quinsy, a severe throat infection, and malaria.”
“It is a good symptom when swelling on the outside of the neck seizes a person very ill of quinsy, for the disease is turned outwardly.”
“Persons who escape an attack of quinsy, and when the disease is turned upon the lungs, die in seven days; or if they pass these they become affected with empyema.”
“It is a good sign when swelling and redness on the breast seize a person very ill of quinsy, for in this case the disease is diverted outwardly.”
“The woman affected with quinsy, who lodged in the house of Aristion: her complaint began in the tongue; speech inarticulate; tongue red and parched.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘quinsy’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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phrontistery - q
from phrontistery.info
qanat, qasida, qat, qigong, qintar, qiviut, qoph, qua, quab, quackle, quacksalver, quad and 227 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Afflictions of the Realm
archaic diseases
dropsy, quinsy, tisick, measles, croup, gout, canker, teething, overlaying, mold-shot head, thrush, whooping-cough and 56 more...
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diseases that make lovely baby girl's...
usually i try to restrict this to sexually transmitted diseases, but some of the others are just so musical. Syphilis, it should be noted, would make a lovely boy's name, but that is outside the sc...
gonorrhea, chlamydia, roseola, rubella, angina, atrophy, candida, cholera, jaundice, palsy, leukemia, alopecia and 50 more...
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Worse Than They Sound
fistula, cryptosporidium, debride, donnybrook, decerebrate, pillory, flagellate, disembogue, minatory, micturate, coprolite, nosocomial and 160 more...
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Joe's list
Fissiparous Weekly Standard Nigeria a fissiparous country 3/2012
fissiparous, inchoate, punctilious, synecdoche, apocryphal, superadd, pedant, pedagogy, astigmatic, inter alia, aphoristically, eponymous and 131 more...
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Uncle John’s Interesting Words
Words I find interesting.
abecedarius, acomoclitic, aperçu, apophenia, aspic, bêtise, bhang, callipygian, calque, carking, cataphract, ceruminous and 97 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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19 c.
some of the interesting words i've had to look up while reading 19th century lit
maugre, connate, alembic, azote, vaticination, valetudinarian, dight, scutcheon, lammergeyer, chamois, asseverate, prebendary and 199 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Speak, Memory
Words gathered while reading Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov.
cracknel, shingly, glaucous, stretcherman, goodish, loden, gutticle, percha, plasticine, instar, wellhole, camera-lucida and 357 more...
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Beautiful Words For Unpleasant Things
Mainly medical....
diarrhoea, dysphoria, anhedonia, dysphasia, eviscerate, carcinoma, purulent, pungent, horror, furuncle, cirrhosis, borborygmus and 47 more...
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Archaic Medical Conditions
dropsy, scurvy, ague, thrush, consumption, mania, rickets, scrumpox, variola, strangery, sloes, screws and 21 more...
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Antiquated Ailments
Old-fashioned words for illnesses, conditions, and other ailments. Also illnesses that have pretty much been eradicated in the developed world(eg. polio)
apoplexy, consumption, delerium tremens, polio, smallpox, dropsy, quinsy, ague, DTs, phthisis, hysteria, diphtheria and 9 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for quinsy.

ruzuzu "An inflammation of the throat, or parts adjacent, especially of the fauces or tonsils, attended by considerable swelling, painful and impeded deglutition, and accompanied by inflammatory fever. It sometimes creates danger of suffocation; -- called also squinancy, and squinzey."
--GNU Webster's 1913 Jul 26, 2012
dailyword One of the characters in Bedknobs and Broomsticks had this. Jul 16, 2012
knitandpurl "When she was ill in December, quite seriously so, with a quinsy, I wrote the following little hymn. I began to compose it one morning, before daybreak, but fell asleep at the end of the first two lines. When I waked again the third and fourth were whispered to my heart in a way which I have often experienced."
--The Winner of Sorrow by Brian Lynch, p 80 Jul 12, 2009
fbharjo dog collar Jun 22, 2007