calenture

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noun

A heat stroke or fever, often suffered in the tropics.

OriginMiddle French calenture ← Spanish calentura →
Scrabble 11
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Meanings

nouncalenture (plural calentures)

plural calentures

  1. A heat stroke or fever, often suffered in the tropics.

    To returne: in changing so many parallels, the weather increast from warme to raging hot, the Sunne flaming all day, insomuch that Calentures begun to vexe us.

    1638, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels, section I
    1 more example

    Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly that I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the excessive heat of the climate.

    1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC
  2. A delirium occurring from such symptoms, in which a stricken sailor pictures the sea as grassy meadows and wishes to dive overboard into them.

Origin

  1. Spanishcalentura
  2. Middle Frenchcalenture
  3. Englishcalenture

From Middle French calenture, from Spanish calentura.

More words from Middle French, Spanish

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Spanish calentura
  • calenturaheat stroke or fever

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

crenulate
Cite this entry
APA

calenture. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/calenture

MLA

“calenture.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/calenture. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “calenture,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/calenture.

Source: calenture on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.