milk sickness
- noun
- /mɪlk ˈsɪk.nəs/
- Specialized
:
enfermedad de la leche
- Cows that graze on white snakeroot can cause milk sickness.
Examples
-
During the 19th century, many settlers in the Midwest died from milk sickness.
-
Medical journals contain accounts of outbreaks of milk sickness among early American pioneers.
-
Scientists eventually discovered that milk sickness was caused by toxins in cows that ate white snakeroot.
-
The doctor diagnosed her with milk sickness.
-
The historic illness called milk sickness affected many settlers in the Midwest due to toxic plants in their cows' diet.
-
Farmers learned to identify the plants that caused milk sickness to protect their livestock and families.
-
After her cow grazed on white snakeroot, the farmer's daughter suffered from milk sickness and needed immediate care.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'milk sickness' is directly interpretable as a sickness related to milk; a B1 learner who knows 'milk' and 'sickness' will readily infer an illness caused by or associated with milk, which matches the MWE's definition. This noun-noun compositional pattern is common and cross-linguistically transparent, so prior exposure is not required to understand the basic meaning.
Etymology
Milk sickness The name milk sickness comes from a simple, dangerous scene. People drank milk from cows that had eaten a poisonous plant called white snakeroot, and the sickness came from that milk. So the term means 'a disease caused by drinking milk from cows that ate a poisonous plant'.
