Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Syphilis.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A plague or pestilence: used with adjectives to designate various specific or contagious affections.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.), archaic Disease, especially of a contagious kind.
  • noun syphilis; -- called also Lues venerea.
  • noun syphilis; -- called also simply lues.

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

  • noun dated, medicine A plague or disease, especially syphilis.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

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

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin luēs, from Latin, plague; see leu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin lues ("plague").

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Examples

  • To follow the course of his life is to understand a critical time of evolution in the rare-book world, when va lues skyrocketed, the super-wealthy built grand collections, and then the more fortunate institutions became their beneficiaries.

    Extreme Book-Collecting Allison Hoover Bartlett 2010

  • Ça me rappelle les Mythologiques de Lévi-Strauss, qu'on cite à tout va mais que personne n'a en fait lues en entier...

    2008 June — Climb to the Stars 2008

  • The rubigo is noticed as a lues venerea by Servius in

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Ça me rappelle les Mythologiques de Lévi-Strauss, qu'on cite à tout va mais que personne n'a en fait lues en entier...

    About Not Reading — Climb to the Stars 2008

  • The reverend father Dom Calmet, a great antiquarian, that is, a great compiler of what was said in former times and what is repeated at the present day, has confounded lues with leprosy.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • He maintains that it was the lues with which the worthy Job was afflicted, and he supposes, after a confident and arrogant commentator of the name of Pineida, that the lues and leprosy are precisely the same disorder.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • Juvenal, which has the slightest reference to lues, although they expatiate on all the effects of debauchery with the utmost freedom and delight.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • Men may bring the leprosy on themselves by their uncleanliness and filth, just as is done by a species of animals to which the very lowest of the vulgar may too naturally be compared; but with respect to lues, it was a present made to America by nature.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • This order was neither Christian, legal, nor judicious; but it proves that lues was regarded as a new plague which had nothing in common with leprosy; as lepers were not hanged for residing in Paris, while those afflicted by lues were so.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • One proof that, at the time of the first introduction of the lues, there was no connection between that disorder and leprosy, is that the few lepers that remained at the conclusion of the fifteenth century were offended at any kind of comparison between themselves and those who were affected by lues.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

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