English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Stedman 1922 says from Gaelic "subhag"?, raspberry, cf. frambesia”) Uncertain.

Noun edit

sibbens (uncountable)

  1. (medicine) A contagious disease, once endemic in Scotland, resembling the yaws and marked by ulceration of the throat and nose and by pustules and soft fungous excrescences upon the surface of the body.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for sibbens”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)