chills and fever

1 4.5

Repeated shivering and high body temperature that often happen with an infection

noun
/tʃɪlz ənd ˈfiːvər/

: escalofríos y fiebre

A few families had proceeded us scarcely enough to designate it a town, but families sufficient to prove it an unhealthy district; for many had already experienced the chills and fever.

Examples

I can call to mind the ordeal through which I passed, with the chills and fever.

Blog text (6)
Some people have got chills and fever.

The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
I suffered chills and fever, and I slept two hours of black sleep before I woke, feeling better.

Fiction book (1990)
She first realized something was wrong on a Friday in October of 2006: "I come down sick, like I thought I had the flu, with chills and fever and stuff."

Blog text (26)
On the family's arrival at Springfield, Illinois, all but two were prostrate with chills and fever.

Blog text (6)
Although Lesa was spared, a large number of the Choctaw had fallen prey to "chills and fever, diarrhea, flux, cold, and in some instances threatened with pneumonia." 14

Academic text (1990)
Last week, I caught a cold and suffered from chills and fever for three days.
After traveling to a tropical area, I experienced chills and fever due to a mosquito-borne illness.
The doctor said that the combination of chills and fever indicated a possible infection.

Synonyms

ague

vschills and fever

Archaic

1 9.9

A fever with chills and sweating that comes and goes

focuses on alternating body shaking and temperature rises rather than sweating

How Severe

chills and fever

1 4.5

febrile

Specialized

4 8.5

Surface Forms

chills and fever singular

chills and fevers plural

Morphology

chill + and + fever

The phrase simply lists two familiar medical symptoms connected by 'and', so a learner who knows 'chill(s)' (feeling cold/shivering) and 'fever' (high body temperature) will readily infer it refers to experiencing both symptoms. The construction is fully compositional and matches common symptom descriptions cross-linguistically, making it immediately understandable to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Chills and fever comes from a clear physical picture: chills are cold shivers and fever is a very hot body temperature when the body fights germs. So when someone says 'chills and fever', they mean feeling both cold shivers and a high temperature from an illness.