Dictionary

fever-ridden en · ADJ

Etymology

From fever + -ridden.

Meanings

1. (of a place or community) Experiencing an epidemic of one of the diseases known as fever (such as yellow fever).
   • 2007, Giles Foden, “The brio of Ali Banana” (review of Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele, The Guardian, 2 June, 2007, Rain and illness turn the camp into a fever-ridden mudbath.
   • 1900, Ira L. Reeves, Bamboo Tales, Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing, Chapter , pp. 135-136, […] it was but shortly after he had returned from fever-ridden Santiago, when in the hospital at Montauk Point, that the much-coveted document, making him an officer in the United States Army, reached him.
2. (of a place) Harbouring the virus that causes one of the diseases known as fever.
   • Twenty long years in that fever-ridden swamp, all day at work under the mangrove-tree, all night chained up in the filthy convict-huts, bitten by mosquitoes, racked with ague, […] 1890 February, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Strange Story of Jonathan Small”, in The Sign of Four (Standard Library), London: Spencer Blackett […], →OCLC, page 225:
   • […] the diamond mine was six and a half hours’ walk through fever-ridden jungle, fraught with hazards from wild animals […] 1957, Ian Fleming, chapter 7, in The Diamond Smugglers, London: Jonathan Cape:
3. (of a person) Suffering from fever.
   • Since the days of Dreyfus, interest in Guiana and the plight of its jungle-bound, fever-ridden convicts has never diminished. 1936 September 14, “Abscess Abolished”, in Time, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2013:
   • 1999, “Soothing Solutions to the Cold & Flu Season” (review of A Soothing Broth by Pat Willard), Washington Post, 17 March, 1999, Willard is plagued by the memory of one seemingly endless night as a newlywed when she helplessly watched her fever-ridden husband toss and turn in misery.
   • The State posts were “clearings,” less than one hundred yards square, cut out of the jungle. Sometimes only black men were in charge, but as a rule the chef de poste was a lonely, fever-ridden white, whose only interest in our arrival was his hope that we might spare him quinine. 1907, Richard Harding Davis, chapter 3, in The Congo and Coasts of Africa, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 89:

Forms