milk pox
- noun
- /mɪlk pɑks/
- Archaic
:
viruela blanca
- Some people believed that catching milk pox offered lifelong immunity from smallpox.
Examples
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Before vaccination, milk pox was sometimes considered a less dangerous alternative to smallpox.
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Doctors of the era noted that patients with milk pox often recovered quickly.
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The doctor diagnosed her with milk pox.
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Some farmers have reported cases of milk pox in their cattle.
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Before vaccination, milk pox was sometimes considered a less dangerous alternative to smallpox.
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Doctors of the era noted that patients with milk pox often recovered quickly.
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Some people believed that catching milk pox offered lifelong immunity from smallpox.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A less serious form of smallpox that causes small sores and a mild fever
A mild form of smallpox with less severe symptoms
A milder form of smallpox caused by a weaker virus
A mild form of smallpox caused by a weaker virus
A mild form of smallpox that makes people less sick than usual
A mild type of smallpox that usually causes less severe sickness and few deaths
A mild form of a serious disease that causes fever and skin blisters, seen historically in the West Indies
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is partly compositional: 'pox' clearly signals a disease and 'milk' functions as a modifier, so learners can infer it denotes a type or variant of pox. However, 'milk' does not transparently mean 'mild form of smallpox' to a B1 learner (it could be read as related to milk, infants, or a milky appearance), so the precise medical sense is not predictable without exposure.
Etymology
Milk pox comes from stories about milkmaids and cows: milk meant the cows and pox the skin disease. One popular story says milkmaids caught a mild illness from cows, so people used milk pox to mean 'a mild form of smallpox'.