quartan
Recurring every four days; especially in designating a form of malaria with such symptoms.
Adjective
- Recurring every four days; especially in designating a form of malaria with such symptoms.
- Pork, of all meats, is[…]naught for queasy stomachs, insomuch that frequent use of it may breed a quartan ague. - 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire:...
Origin
From Anglo-Norman quartaine, Old French quartaine, from Latin quartāna (short for febris quartana), noun use of feminine form of quartānus (“recurring every four days”), from quartus (“fourth”).
Noun
- A fever whose symptoms recur every four days.
- an Egyptian at Alexandria, whose quartan resisted the strongest applications of European physic, was effectually healed by the actual cautery, which a certain Arab Shaykh applied to the crown of his head. - 1855, Sir...