Meaning & use
ague
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Meanings
noununcountablearchaicmedical
A fever, especially malaria, in which bouts of shivering alternate with sweating.
Grammar: Usually uncountable and found in older writing: he was ill with ague.
Patterns
- suffer from ague
- be sick with ague
The farmer lay sick with ague through the damp autumn.
Ague was common in the marshy parts of England long ago.
In the novel, the traveler shook with ague in the cold cabin.
nouncountableliteraryarchaic
A fit of shivering or trembling.
Grammar: Countable and literary: an ague of fear.
Patterns
- an ague of something
An ague of fear ran through the hall.
He felt a sudden ague as the news was read out.
Word forms
| plural | agues |
|---|
Common combinations
- suffer from ague
- The sailors suffered from ague in the tropics.
- fits of ague
- She woke with fits of ague every other night.
- marsh ague
- Marsh ague once troubled the villages near the fens.
- shake with ague
- The boy shook with ague under three blankets.
Synonyms and how they differ
- malaria
- Malaria is the modern, precise name of the disease, while ague is the old general word for such fevers.
- fever
- Fever is the ordinary word for raised temperature and does not imply alternating chills and sweats.
- shivers
- Shivers are just the shaking, while ague includes the illness behind it.
Word family
- aguish adjective
- of or like ague, shivering
- aguey adjective
- shaky or feverish, an older variant
Commonly confused: ague or plague?
ague vs plague
Plague is a deadly epidemic disease, not a recurring fever with chills.
Practice
In the old story, the explorer was struck down by ___ and shook beneath his blankets.
Choose one answer.
Ague is an old word for a fever with shivering. Agony is sharp pain, so it looks similar but does not name an illness.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ague”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.