📅 Every fourth day 🤒 A four-day fever

quartan

1 9.9

Happening every fourth day, often in malaria infections

adjective
/ˈkwɔrtən/

Archaic

: cuartana

Although the second set of novellas, Desenganos amorosos, appeared in 1647, ten years after the first set was published, she used the same characters in the narrative frame: a group of young people who meet during some winter "nights" to entertain a young woman, Lysis, who is ill with quartan fever.

Examples

He was diagnosed with quartan fever, which meant he would have symptoms every fourth day.
To treat her quartan fever, the patient needed medication to manage the recurring symptoms occurring every four days.
The doctor explained that a quartan condition could lead to intense chills and high fever on a regular cycle.

Surface Forms

quartan positive

Morphology

quartan = quart (semi-transparent) = quart + an

As an adjective, it denotes 'of the fourth' (occurring every fourth day); the Latinate formation is etymologically regular but not fully transparent to learners without knowledge of number roots.

Etymology

Quartan comes from the Latin quartus meaning 'fourth', the same root you see in quarter and quart. That is why something described as quartan happens every fourth day, especially a fever that repeats on a four-day cycle.