calenture means A heat stroke or fever, often suffered in the tropics. It carries an Arena rating of 1898, earned across 185 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, calenture ranks #56 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #74 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #164 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #281 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
Why “calenture” is a great word
CALENTURE — [Noun] A tropical fever or delirium, especially in sailors, characterized by the hallucination that the sea is a green field. From Middle French calenture, from Spanish calentura ("fever"), from calentar ("to be hot"), from Latin calent-, calēns ("hot, burning"). First attested in English 1585–95. Unlike "sunstroke," which denotes a specific physical collapse from heat, or "delirium," a general term for mental disturbance, calenture is a specific maritime madness born of isolation and unbearable sun. It is the spectral meadow shimmering beyond the ship's rail, the desperate conviction that cool earth lies just beneath the burning waves, and the final, fatal plunge into a welcoming, hallucinated pasture—the mind's last, verdant rebellion against an infinite desert of blue, a drowning vision of the solid earth it may never touch again.
Etymology
From Middle French calenture, from Spanish calentura.
noun
- A heat stroke or fever, often suffered in the tropics.e.g.“To returne: in changing so many parallels, the weather increast from warme to raging hot, the Sunne flaming all day, insomuch that Calentures begun to vexe us.” — 1638, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels, section I:
- A delirium occurring from such symptoms, in which a stricken sailor pictures the sea as grassy meadows and wishes to dive overboard into them.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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