deer fly fever
- noun
- /dɪr flaɪ ˈfiːvər/
- Specialized
:
fiebre de mosca ciervo
- Symptoms of deer fly fever in humans may include fever, chills, and swollen glands.
Examples
-
Protective clothing can help prevent the transmission of deer fly fever from infected animals or insects.
-
Hunters are sometimes exposed to deer fly fever when handling wild rabbits in endemic areas.
-
I heard that deer fly fever is spreading in rural areas.
-
Have you ever heard of deer fly fever?
-
Hunters are sometimes exposed to deer fly fever when handling wild rabbits in endemic areas.
-
Protective clothing can help prevent the transmission of deer fly fever from infected animals or insects.
-
Symptoms of deer fly fever in humans may include fever, chills, and swollen glands.
Synonyms
3
9.9
A serious disease caused by bacteria that people get from rabbits or insect bites
1
8.5
A disease in rabbits and other small animals that can spread to people by ticks, flies or touching infected animals
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase can be parsed compositionally: 'deer fly' is interpretable as a type of fly (a fly associated with deer) and 'fever' signals an illness, so a learner who knows the parts can reasonably infer it denotes a fever/disease connected to deer flies. However, the term is a specialized medical name with specific epidemiological details (hosts, vectors) that are not predictable from the constituents, so the meaning is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The noun deer fly fever comes from people noticing that small biting flies that fed on deer and rabbits often left a high 'fever' or sickness in the animals or in people they bit. So today deer fly fever means 'a disease' people can catch from infected animals or insect bites.