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breakbone. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
breakbone, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
breakbone in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
breakbone you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From break + bone.
Noun
breakbone (countable and uncountable, plural breakbones)
- (pathology, uncountable) Dengue fever.
1892 May, “At the Dry Tortugas During the War”, in The Californian Illustrated Magazine, volume 1, number 6, page 586:All felt that their safety was in his hands and that his careful watch and strict enforcement of the quarantine would result in our exemption from the scourge. He was obeyed implicitly, and for a time we escaped the fever, but the "breakbone" singled us out one by one, and several times alarming symptoms of the dreaded yellow fever appeared.
1859, Dr. Samuel Henry Dickson, “Diseases of the Excernent System”, in Elements of Medicine, 2nd edition, page 748:Besides this, yellow fever and scarlatina are two of the gravest maladies on the catalogues of the nosologists, and produce, everywhere, a serious mortality when they prevail. But nobody dies of dengue or breakbone; no, not one in one thousand, taken promiscuously, and under all circumstances of discomfort or mal-treatment. As to its relations with malaria and malarious diseases, it suffices to remark that it is not produced, nor has I been known to spread, in the worst malarious localities.
(US dialect, countable) A chicken's wishbone.