measles

noun

1. (uncountable)An acute and highly contagious disease which often afflicts children caused by the virus Measles morbillivirus and causing red rashes, fever, runny nose, coughing, and red eyes.

   “Maybe it's the 'measles. They say they're going around the neighborhood.”

   “Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it.”

   “In the camps a case of measles is defined as a generalized rash of three or more days duration, with a fever of at least 38.8°C.., and any one of the following: cough, coryza or conjunctivitis.”

   “Although the MMR vaccine was introduced in 1988, Britain offered separate measles injections until 1999.”

2. (obsolete, uncountable)Any disease causing red rashes.
3. (obsolete, uncountable)Used as an intensifier.

   “Why the meazills, should you stand heere, with your traine...”

4. (uncountable)Synonym of cysticercosis: A disease of livestock or meat caused by the presence of tapeworm larvae.

   “The Swyne dyed of the Measils.”

   “Porcine measles, thought by classical writers to be leprosy, is actually the result of tapeworm cysts which cause ulcerations of the pig's tongue.”

5. (obsolete, uncountable)Any disease causing a tree's bark to become rough and irregular.

   “Their fruit-trees are subject to two diseases, the Meazels... and lowsiness.”

6. (form-of, plural, uncountable)plural of measle: a red spot forming part of a rash, (now) particularly those caused by M. morbillivirus.

   “Others take a fether, and dippe it in the saide water, and therwith they annoynte all the Measells of the Face when they are come forth.”

7. (figuratively, form-of, plural, uncountable)plural of measle: any similar-looking red spot, particularly (printing) foxing.

   “Measles. When prints are imperfectly fixed, the appearance presented is very similar to that of the same disease in the human subject. Hence the name.”

   “The stars, like measles, fade at last.”

   “The Lady Tofaa also had a red measle of paint on her forehead between her eyes.”

   “How do I get the measles out of an Indian paper print, Lovejoy?... Measles is trade nickname for foxing, those brown spots... that trouble books, prints, and watercolors.”

8. (form-of, plural, uncountable)plural of measle: the individual cysts of cysticercosis.
9. (form-of, obsolete, plural, uncountable)plural of measle: the individual blisters in the surface of a diseased tree's bark.
10. (US, jargon, uncountable)A discreet assassination made to look like death from any natural cause.

    “[…] they would prefer having him "die of the measles," as wags at the CIA put it, than be punished by legal means. If there is no convenient way of administering the "measles," they may even favor simply letting him go.”

    “Such final solutions, sometimes referred to as termination with extreme prejudice, are known in the CIA as dying of the measles — that is, the death appears to be of natural causes.”

11. (form-of, obsolete, plural)plural of measle
12. (alt-of, alternative, obsolete)Alternative form of mesels: Leprosy.

verb

1. (form-of, indicative, present, singular, third-person)third-person singular simple present indicative of measle