syphilis

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A chronic infectious disease caused by a spirochete (Treponema pallidum), either transmitted by direct contact, usually in sexual intercourse, or passed from mother to child in utero, and progressing through three stages characterized respectively by local formation of chancres, ulcerous skin eruptions, and systemic infection leading to general paresis.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An infectious venereal disease of chronic course, communicated from person to person by actual contact with discharges containing the virus, or by heredity. The initial lesion at the point of inoculation is the hard or true chancre; this, after a short period, is followed by skin-affections of varied form, sore throat with mucous patches and swelling of the lymphatic glands, and later by disease of the bones, muscles, arteries, and viscera. The chancre is known as primary syphilis, the diseases of the skin and mucous membranes as secondary syphilis, and the later disorders as tertiary syphilis.

Wiktionary

1. n. pathology A disease spread via sexual activity, caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Med.) The pox, or venereal disease; a chronic, specific, infectious disease, usually communicated by sexual intercourse or by hereditary transmission, and occurring in three stages known as primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis. See under primary, secondary, and tertiary.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a common venereal disease caused by the treponema pallidum spirochete; symptoms change through progressive stages; can be congenital (transmitted through the placenta)