creeping crud

English

Noun

creeping crud

1. (slang) Any of various diseases.
   • 1946, Belleau Wood (Aircraft carrier), "Flight Quarters.": The War Story of the U.S.S. Belleau Wood (page 67)

     In the heat of the tropics a variety of skin irritations — collectively dubbed the “creeping crud” — gripped with unrelenting tenacity the hides of the tender.

   • 2010, Jack De Yonge, Boom Town Boy: Coming of Age on Alaska's Lost Frontier, page 197:

     The clap, syphilis, the blue balls, creeping crud, the sore-nosed dick — we all knew what those were, the very things our priests and ministers and parents and others warned us against […]

   • 2015, Sylvia Nobel, Forbidden Entry, page 123:

     If he's got some kind of creeping crud, I definitely don't want it.