Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK, colloquial Rheumatism
  • noun Plural form of rheumatic.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • If a clear head is worth more than one dizzy with perpetual vertigo -- if muscles with the play of health in them are worth more than those drawn up in chronic "rheumatics" -- if an eye quick to catch passing objects is better than one with vision dim and uncertain -- then God will require of us efficiency just in proportion to what he has given us.

    New Tabernacle Sermons 1867

  • 'Lisbeth, who for years had suffered severely from "rheumatics," and who had made up her mind that she was to die before the "old man," was but an indifferent nurse.

    A Child of the Glens or, Elsie's Fortune Edward Newenham Hoare

  • With a sigh she put on her ordinary everyday working dress, and proceeded to get the breakfast ready, for her mother had been out late the previous night, celebrating the new arrivals in the street, and had the 'rheumatics' this morning.

    Liza of Lambeth 1919

  • He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed the greater part of existence.

    The Shuttle 1907

  • He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed the greater part of existence.

    The Shuttle Frances Hodgson Burnett 1886

  • "I hev always hearn that sayin ', Old Daddy," acquiesced an elderly codger, who, by reason of "rheumatics," made no pretension to muscle.

    The Young Mountaineers Short Stories Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

  • And he hung with a transfixed interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of those who cultivate "rheumatics," as if each separate twinge racked his own sympathetic and filial sensibilities.

    The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge 1895 Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

  • This reckless selfishness had further only resulted in giving "rheumatics" to that progenitor, who now required the external administration of opodeldoc to his limbs, and the internal administration of whiskey.

    Flip, a California romance Bret Harte 1869

  • "rheumatics," and his mother kept at home by the necessity of providing dinner for those four small boys.

    The Young Mountaineers Short Stories Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

  • S'posin 'I get a rupture, or the rheumatics, or the cholera.

    THE PRECARIOUSNESS OF LIFE 2010

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