nettle-rash

English

Noun

nettle-rash (countable and uncountable, plural nettle-rashes)

1. (medicine) Itchy, swollen, red areas of the skin which can appear quickly in response to an allergen or due to other conditions.
   • [1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 15: Circe]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 495:

     Poor kids. Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash.]

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943, Chapter XI, p. 187, [1]

     They and their relatives ate peanuts till they were covered in nettle-rash.

   • 1958, Henno Martin, The Sheltering Desert, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, Thomas Nelson & Sons, p. 99,

     His skin was covered with little bumps as though from a nettle rash. I looked for the tick he had flung away. It was black and swollen from old blood and it seemed clear that this infected blood had got into the wound and caused acute blood poisoning.

   • 1997, Edna O'Brien, Down by the River, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, p. 242,

     His colour is changing now, he does not have to look in the mirror, it's like a nettle-rash rising, scalding, scalding.

Synonyms

• hives
• urticaria

Derived terms

• nettle-rashed

Translations

itchy areas of the skin — see urticaria