febrile

See also: fébrile

Contents

English

WOTD – 4 October 2006

Etymology

Borrowed from Medieval Latin febrilis, from Latin febris (“fever”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiːbɹaɪl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adjective

febrile (comparative more febrile, superlative most febrile)

1. Feverish, or having a high temperature.
   • 1983, Isaac Asimov, chapter 22, in The Robots of Dawn, →ISBN, page 116:

     Aurora's orange sun (Baley scarcely noted the orange tinge now) was mildly warm on his back, lacking the febrile heat that Earth's sun had in summer (but, then, what was the climate and season on this portion of Aurora right now?).

2. Full of nervous energy.
   • 2011 October 23, Tom Fordyce, “2011 Rugby World Cup final: New Zealand 8-7 France”, in BBC Sport‎^[1]:

     An already febrile atmosphere within the ground before the start had been stoked still further when France's players formed an arrow formation to face down the haka, and then advanced slowly over halfway as the capacity crowd roared.

Synonyms

• (feverish): flushed, hot
• (full of energy): energetic, excited

Derived terms

• afebrile
• antefebrile
• antifebrile
• febrility
• intrafebrile
• nonfebrile
• postfebrile
• subfebrile
• subfebrile
• unfebrile

 

Translations

feverish

• Bulgarian: трескав (bg) (treskav)
• Czech: horečnatý
• Danish: febersyg, febril (da)
• Dutch: koortsig (nl), koortsachtig (nl)
• Finnish: kuumeinen (fi), febriili

• French: fébrile (fr)
• Ido: febrala (io), febratra (io), febroza (io)
• Japanese: 熱の（ある） (ねつの（ある）, netsu no (aru))
• Portuguese: febril (pt)
• Spanish: febril (es)

full of nervous energy

• Czech: horečnatý
• Danish: febril (da)
• Dutch: koortsachtig (nl)

• French: fébrile (fr)
• Russian: лихора́дочный (ru) m pl (lixorádočnyj)

Anagrams

• félibre

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German

Adjective

febrile

1. inflected form of febril