consumptive
1
9.9
- adjective
- /kənˈsʌmp.tɪv/
- Archaic
:
consuntivo
- She was a pale girl from Eastern Europe—Bulgaria, I think—who looked consumptive, a sort of culinary female Keats.
- consumptive cough
- consumptive courtesan
Examples
-
It posed a consumptive, bald man with a sunken chest next to a robust fellow with a full head of hair.
Fiction book (1992) -
She's consumptive.
-
May had been consumptive.
Fiction book (1997) -
Bigum becomes pale, clenches his teeth, and wheezes—all in the manner of a consumptive in the final stages, fighting for breath.
Academic text (1999) -
Dr. Porter maintained that consumptive parents would have children susceptible to the disease, that "acquired, as well as natural peculiarities, may be transmitted to our children," and thus that certain problematic "modes of living" (such as effeminacy, early marriages, and the like) would be passed along (64).
Academic text (1999) -
Niels Lyhne, by contrast, provides an eroticized, aestheticized portrait of a consumptive—to the nineteenth century, a more typical literary treatment.
Academic text (1999) -
The consumptive child struggled to breathe, her cough echoing in the quiet room.
-
In historical accounts, many consumptive patients were often depicted as fragile and dreamy.
-
He was a consumptive artist, often too weak to leave his studio, but his works were filled with life.
Synonyms
1
8.7
Relating to the disease tuberculosis and its effects on the body
1
9.6
Having a serious disease that usually affects the lungs and is caused by a germ
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Consumptive comes from the Latin root consumere 'to use up' and the old English word consumption, which was the name for a lung disease that seemed to 'use up' the body. So a consumptive in older writing describes someone made weak by that illness.