yellow fever

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

yellow fever (uncountable)

1. An acute febrile illness of tropical regions, caused by a flavivirus (Yellow fever virus) and spread by certain mosquitoes, characterised by jaundice, black vomit and the absence of urination.

   Synonyms: (obsolete) black vomit, (obsolete) yellow jack, (obsolete) Bulam fever

   • 2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 257:

     The town up the road was overcome by yellow fever, he said. All travelers warned away.

2. (slang) An attraction to ethnically East Asian men or women, expressed by non-East Asian (especially Caucasian) people.

   Synonym: Asian fever

   Hyponym: Japanese fever

3. (dated) A lust for gold; an obsession with seeking gold ore.

   Synonym: gold fever

   • 1910, Giacomo Puccini, La Fanciulla Del West: The Girl of the Golden West:

     He's got the yellow fever; Once get the sight of gold and you are poisoned.

   • 1951, George Peter Hammond, The Larkin Papers, Univ of California Press:

     An onze a day, two a day, or three—every one has the gold or yellow fever. Last night several of the most respectible American residents of this town arrived home from a visit to the gold regions.

   • 1963, Robert Raine Geyer, Death Trails in Bolivia to Faith Triumphant:

     But the true yellow fever that has abounded in the lower gold-bearing valleys around Guanay can possibly illustrate in sickness what takes place in actuality among the sons of men who are seduced by the lust for gold.

   • 2000 October 10, W. Jacobson, Dickens and the Children of Empire, Springer, →ISBN, pages 68–69:

     In the stories he wrote and published about the gold rush, Dickens does not resolve characters' feelings of class resentment so much as explain them in non-political terms […] Dickens spreads this strain of 'yellow fever' among his characters, making their labour unrest seem both understandable and pathological.

Coordinate terms

sexual preference

• banana
• egg
• sideways
• twinkie
• weeaboo

 

Derived terms

• yellow-fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti)

Related terms

sexual preference

• Arab fever
• Asian fever
• black fever
• blue fever
• Indian fever
• Japanese fever
• jungle fever
• white fever

 

Translations

illness

• Arabic: حَمَّى صَفْرَاء f (ḥammā ṣafrāʔ)
• Breton: terzhienn-velen (br) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 黃熱病／黄热病 (zh) (huángrèbìng)

• Danish: gul feber
• Dutch: gele koorts (nl) f
• Esperanto: flava febro
• Finnish: keltakuume (fi)
• French: fièvre jaune (fr) f
• Georgian: ყვითელი ციებ-ცხელება (q̇viteli cieb-cxeleba), ყვითელი ცხელება (q̇viteli cxeleba)
• German: Gelbfieber (de) n
• Hungarian: sárgaláz (hu)
• Irish: fiabhras buí n
• Japanese: 黄熱 (ja) (おうねつ, ōnetsu)
• Korean: 황열 (ko) (hwang'yeol)
• Polish: żółta febra (pl) f
• Portuguese: febre amarela (pt) f
• Romanian: friguri galbene (ro) n pl
• Russian: жёлтая лихора́дка f (žóltaja lixorádka), амарилле́з (ru) m (amarilléz)
• Scottish Gaelic: fiabhras-buidhe m
• Spanish: fiebre amarilla (es) f
• Swahili: homa ya manjano
• Swedish: gul feber c, gula febern c
• Thai: ไข้เหลือง (th) (kâi-lʉ̌ʉang)
• Turkish: sarıhumma (tr)
• Ukrainian: жо́вта гаря́чка f (žóvta harjáčka)
• Vietnamese: sốt vàng (vi), sốt vàng da
• Yoruba: ibà pọ́njú-pọ́ntọ̀
• Yucatec Maya: xekik

slang: attraction

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2024) “yellow fever n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang