undulant fever
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈʌndjʊlənt ˈfiːvər/
- Specialized
- In humans, the brucellosis bacteria cause undulant fever, which is contracted by drinking the unpasteurized milk of an infected animal.
- undulant fever is brucellosis
- contract undulant fever
Examples
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Just recently, the Sunshine Project learned that for fourteen months, Texas A&M University concealed an incident in which a student researcher fell seriously ill from undulant fever.
Academic text (2007) -
Occasionally, people contract brucellosis—called undulant fever in humans—from eating unpasteurized goat cheeses.
Academic text (1996) -
Most people contracted brucellosis or undulant fever from drinking raw milk; however, milk pasteurization largely eliminated this source of infection in the 1940s.
-
Occasionally, people contract brucellosis—called undulant fever in humans—from eating unpasteurized goat cheeses.
Synonyms
2
8.2
A disease caused by bacteria that animals have and people can catch, causing fever
1
7.6
An illness people get from infected animals or raw dairy when germs enter the body, causing fever and headache
1
9.4
A sickness you catch from sick animals, meat, or milk that causes fever and headache
An illness from bacteria people get from animals or raw milk that causes fever and headache
A disease people get from animals or raw milk that causes fever and flu-like symptoms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'undulant' (wavelike, fluctuating) combined with 'fever' allows a learner to infer a fever that rises and falls, so the recurrent/undulating quality is derivable from the constituents. However, the phrase denotes a specific infectious disease (brucellosis) often zoonotic, and that etiological/specialized medical information is not predictable from the parts, making the term only partially transparent.
Etymology
Undulant fever comes from undulant, a word that means 'moving like a wave'. The image is a fever that goes up and down like waves, so the name describes a sickness where fevers come back.