smallpox

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See also: small-pox and small pox

English

Severe form of smallpox.

Etymology

From small +‎ pox, in contrast to greatpox (“syphilis”).

Pronunciation

Noun

smallpox (usually uncountable, plural smallpoxes)

  1. (pathology) An acute, highly infectious often fatal disease caused by Variola virus of the family Poxviridae. It was completely eradicated in the 1970s, but still exists in laboratories. Those who survived were left with pockmarks.
    Synonym: variola
    The Europeans brought new diseases such as smallpox, measles, dysentery, influenza, syphilis and leprosy.
    • 1973, Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 42:
      We know that the most deadly of the early epidemics in America were those of the eruptive fevers—smallpox, measles, typhus, and so on. The first to arrive and the deadliest, said contemporaries, was smallpox.
    • 1998 February 15, David X. Cohen, “Das Bus”, in The Simpsons, season 9, episode 14, spoken by Homer:
      Can't make it in today, Mr. Smithers; I have smallpox. Well it wasn't wiped out in my house!

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