Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A highly contagious tropical disease that chiefly affects children, caused by the spirochete Treponema pertenue and characterized by raspberrylike sores, especially on the hands, feet, and face. Also called frambesia.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A contagious disease of the skin, endemic in many tropical regions: same as frambœsia.
Wiktionary
- n. pathology A contagious tropical disease, caused by the spirochete Treponema pertenue, characterized by yellowish or reddish tumors, which often resemble currants, strawberries, or raspberries.
- n. Plural form of yaw.
- v. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of yaw.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) A disease, occurring in the Antilles and in Africa, characterized by yellowish or reddish tumors, of a contagious character, which, in shape and appearance, often resemble currants, strawberries, or raspberries. There are several varieties of this disease, variously known as frambœsia, pian, verrugas, and crab-yaws.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an infectious tropical disease resembling syphilis in its early stages; marked by red skin eruptions and ulcerating lesions
Etymologies
- From American Spanish yaya, sore, from Carib yaya, disease. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“You must ask your examining surgeon if he is acquainted with the distemper of the yaws, which is the virus of”
History of Louisisana Or of the Western Parts of Virginia and Carolina: Containing
“The cousin diseased causes yaws which is an infection caused by a sub-species of the same bacteria.”
Christopher Columbus Responsible For Syphilis Spread According To New Study
“Mr Hayward said there were two curved friction marks, or "yaws", on the road where the car had spun out before hitting the barrier and coming to a rest on its side.”
“I also believe, after reading The Cruise of the Snark, Charmian's The Log of the Snark, and Martin Johnson's Through the South Seas With Jack London, that the tropical diseases London contracted while on the Snark voyage, especially yaws or "Solomon Island sores," and even moreso London's liberal treatment for them consisting of corrosive sublimate of mercury applied to the sores, ruined his kidneys and hastened his death eight years later.”
“One surgeon recorded the local treatment for the sores of yaws was to scrub until they bled freely before rubbing lime into them, at which "the strongest men have shrieked and yelled and even wept like children".”
“Except when wide yaws took it off its course, a bidarka was heading in for the beach.”
“Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.”
“But here we are, seven experienced fishermen, heatedly discussing the identity of a little brown-barred creature as the charter boat heaves and yaws, knocking everyone off balance.”
“Over the next five seconds, as those on the ground watch in disbelief, Aircraft 4 leans slightly right, then yaws left, sliding through the air like a car skidding through a curve.”
“They did, but only of a certain type: those diseases in which the host can remain infected for a long time, such as amoebic dysentery, leprosy, and yaws, or those diseases that have microbes that can maintain themselves in alternative hosts, like water or insects, such as schistosomiasis or yellow fever.”
Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘yaws’.
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Collected Words - List 2
I've been saving these words FOR YEARS. Now, I've found Wordie
gasconade, zaccheus, spoor, precentor, bombazine, otiose, khamsin, bruited, viva voce, whilom, lenitive, ebullition and 244 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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Looking Words Up is Time-Consuming, D...
Stuff found while looking up other stuff, and there's no place to put this stuff.
storax, spignel, cassia lignea, gum serapin, spikenard, paraterminal, paraterminal, cingulate gyrus, hypocaust, laconicum, tepidarium, frigidarium and 119 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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DYSLEXIC'S DREAD
Words That Make Sense in Reverse Too! Bad news for a dyslexic, 'cause s/he's got no clue if s/he read the word correctly or not, as opposed to a palindrome (i.e., no mistake possible, cf. "Dyslexic...
tool, lever, nap, pool, leer, leek, desserts, strop, doom, ukiah, yaws, ward and 213 more...
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Permutations
There are 17576 different sequences of three letters (26 x 26 x 26). How many of them occur in words? General rules of engagement: mononyms only, lower case preferred to upper case, short preferred...
aaargh, niqaabi, Isaac, raad, baaed, haaf, laager, aah, kamaaina, Naajaat, aak, aalii and 637 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for yaws.
chained_bear "Henry Laurens was a formal man with a sharp temper and a judgmental eye with his merchandise. When the Hare was still at sea, he wrote several letters to friends complaining that he was already swamped with business, and saying that he would prefer that the ship go to another port. 'The place is quite clog'd with slaves that God knows what we shall dow ith them,' he told one man. When the Hare reached Charleston, only about 110 people on it were still alive. 'Really they are a wretched cargo,' Laurens wrote a friend. 'They are a most scabby flock, all of them full of the Crocheraws'—meaning the yaws, a contagious skin disease. Nevertheless, Laurens placed his advertisement for this group of 'Healthy Slaves.'"
—Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (NY: Ballantine Books, 1998), 193
For those unaware (or not keeping track), Henry Laurens, a slave trader, was a leading citizen of South Carolina and served as the president of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. His son, John, however, was a bona-fide war hero and spent several years of his too-short life seeking to free slaves and enlist them (voluntarily) in the Continental army. (His plans to do so were shot down by his father and by others, including George Washington.) Oct 12, 2009
oroboros Sway in reverse. Nov 3, 2007