chickenpox

or chick·en pox

[ chik-uhn-poks ]

noun
  1. a disease, commonly of children, caused by the varicella zoster virus and characterized by mild headache and fever, malaise, and eruption of blisters on the skin and mucous membranes.

Origin of chickenpox

1
First recorded in 1720–30

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use chickenpox in a sentence

  • They took it like scarlet fever or chicken-pox, and feel all the more secure now for having had it.

    Sinister Street, vol. 1 | Compton Mackenzie
  • It was like toothache or mumps or chicken-pox, an ignoble, complaint of which one is ashamed, but before which one is helpless.

    The Honorable Percival | Alice Hegan Rice
  • I understand nobody who had been vaccinated got any of the chicken-pox, as you call it.

    The Clarion | Samuel Hopkins Adams
  • Chicken pox, too, differs essentially from smallpox in the course of its development.

  • An eruption of chicken pox does not burst out all over the body at once, but appears in successive rashes.

British Dictionary definitions for chickenpox

chickenpox

/ (ˈtʃɪkɪnˌpɒks) /


noun
  1. a highly communicable viral disease most commonly affecting children, characterized by slight fever and the eruption of a rash

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for chickenpox

chickenpox

[ chĭkən-pŏks′ ]


  1. A highly contagious infectious disease, usually of children, caused by the varicella-zoster virus of the genus Varicellavirus. The infection is characterized by fever, and itching skin blisters that start on the trunk of the body and spread to the extremities. Also called varicella

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Cultural definitions for chicken pox

chicken pox

A mild but highly contagious disease, caused by a virus and characterized by slight fever and the eruption of blisters on the skin. Chicken pox is classified as a disease of childhood, although it can occur in adults.

Notes for chicken pox

Children who have had chicken pox are immune to future infection by the virus that causes it.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.