yellow fever

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English

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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yellow fever (uncountable)

  1. (pathology) An acute febrile illness of tropical regions, caused by a flavivirus (Yellow fever virus) and spread by certain mosquitoes, characterised by jaundice, black vomit and the absence of urination.
    Synonyms: (obsolete) black vomit, (obsolete) yellow jack, (obsolete) Bulam fever
    Hypernym: mosquito-borne disease
  2. (figurative, slang) An attraction to ethnically East Asian men or women, expressed by non-East Asian (especially white European male) people.
    Synonym: Asian fever
    Hyponym: Japanese fever
    Coordinate terms: Arab fever, black fever, blue fever, jungle fever, white fever, Indian fever
    • 2015, “In This B*tch”, in WORLDWIDE, performed by Jay Park:
      Your girl want me, we both know / Cause she got yellow fever
  3. (figurative, dated) A lust for gold; an obsession with seeking gold ore.
    Synonym: gold fever
    • 1910, Giacomo Puccini, La Fanciulla Del West: The Girl of the Golden West:
      He's got the yellow fever; Once get the sight of gold and you are poisoned.
    • 1951, George Peter Hammond, The Larkin Papers, Univ of California Press:
      An onze a day, two a day, or three—every one has the gold or yellow fever. Last night several of the most respectible American residents of this town arrived home from a visit to the gold regions.
    • 1963, Robert Raine Geyer, Death Trails in Bolivia to Faith Triumphant:
      But the true yellow fever that has abounded in the lower gold-bearing valleys around Guanay can possibly illustrate in sickness what takes place in actuality among the sons of men who are seduced by the lust for gold.
    • 2000 October 10, W. Jacobson, Dickens and the Children of Empire, Springer, →ISBN, pages 68–69:
      In the stories he wrote and published about the gold rush, Dickens does not resolve characters' feelings of class resentment so much as explain them in non-political terms [] Dickens spreads this strain of 'yellow fever' among his characters, making their labour unrest seem both understandable and pathological.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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sexual preference

Further reading

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