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Glite Dictionary
🤒 Severe bone pain 🥊 Bone breaker 🦴 A bone fracture
breakbone

breakbone

1 9.9
Causing very strong bone and body pain during a fever
  • adjective
  • /ˈbreɪkˌboʊn/
  • Archaic
translation icon : dolor de huesos
  • After suffering from breakbone fever, she felt as if her bones had been shattered.

Examples

  • You told me it was breakbone fever.

    Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991)

  • Dengue is often referred to as breakbone fever due to the intense pain it causes.

  • The doctor explained that breakbone fever is notorious for causing excruciating pain in the joints.

Synonyms

bone-crunching
vsbreakbone
7.2

Extremely hard and painful, often making a loud, crushing sound

describes a medical symptom causing severe skeletal pain rather than general intensity

Antonyms

relief
440 1.0

A feeling of comfort when pain or worry goes away

comfort
190 1.0

A feeling of physical ease and being free from pain

Compounds

breakbone fever
  • Archaic
5.3

A tropical disease spread by mosquitoes that causes high fever, rash and very bad joint and muscle pain

How Painful

excruciating
46 7.9
breakbone
  • Archaic
1 9.9
painful
737 1.0
uncomfortable
713 1.7
mild
107 1.0

Surface Forms

breakbone positive

Morphology

breakbone = break + bone (semi-transparent) = break + bone

The components 'break' + 'bone' are clear, but as an adjective in medical names (e.g., 'breakbone fever') the meaning 'causing severe bone pain' is somewhat idiomatic rather than a literal bone-breaking.

Etymology

Breakbone comes from the simple parts break ('to break') and bone ('the hard part inside your body'), and it was used for fevers that give very bad aches as if your bones would break, so calling a fever 'breakbone' links that strong image to the illness.