Cupid's disease

alternative Cupid's Disease

1. datedeuphemisticuncountableSynonym of syphilis.

   It wasn't Cupid's disease, as the gossipmongers charged. It was radium.

   2017, Kate Moore, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

   5 more examples

   "Yes, Cupid's Disease—syphilis, you know. I was in a brother in Salonika, nearly seventy years ago. I caught syphilis—lots of the girls had it—we called it Cupid's Disease. My husband saved me, took me out, had it treated. That was years before penicillin, of course. Could it have caught up with me after all these years?"

   1985, Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

   Post-syphilic syndrome is reputedly rather fun. You get to experience lots of luscious sexy sensations. That's why it's called Cupid's Disease.

   2006 May 10, Elixirbet, “how many STDs are there?”, in soc.sexuality.general (Usenet), retrieved 22 Apr 2022

   As the word "syphilis" took on the taint of the malady, however, vaguer tems such as special disease, social disease, secret disease, vice disease, Cupid's disease, a certain disease, blood disease, and blood poison emerged.

   2010, Ralph Keyes, Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms

   In the past, syphilis was called the French disease but was also known as the Christian disease, the Great Pox, Cupid's disease, and the Black Lion; it was most well-known as lues, lues venereal, or venereal plague.

   2017, Thomas P. Habif, M. Shane Chapman, James G. H. Dinulos, Kathryn A. Zug, Skin Disease: Diagnosis and Treatment

   Given the horror with which 'Cupid's disease' was regarded in 1900 Mary must have told as few people as possible of the real cause of her husband's decline into insanity.

   2018, Susanna de Vries, To the Ends of the Earth: Mary Gaunt, Pioneer Traveller

   Synonyms: syphilis

1. datedeuphemisticuncountableAlternative letter-case form of Cupid's disease.