breakbone

English

Etymology

From break +‎ bone.

Noun

breakbone (countable and uncountable, plural breakbones)

1. (pathology, uncountable) Dengue fever.
   • 1892 May, “At the Dry Tortugas During the War”, in The Californian Illustrated Magazine‎, volume 1, number 6, page 586:

     All felt that their safety was in his hands and that his careful watch and strict enforcement of the quarantine would result in our exemption from the scourge. He was obeyed implicitly, and for a time we escaped the fever, but the "breakbone" singled us out one by one, and several times alarming symptoms of the dreaded yellow fever appeared.

   • 1859, Dr. Samuel Henry Dickson, “Diseases of the Excernent System”, in Elements of Medicine, 2nd edition, page 748:

     Besides this, yellow fever and scarlatina are two of the gravest maladies on the catalogues of the nosologists, and produce, everywhere, a serious mortality when they prevail. But nobody dies of dengue or breakbone; no, not one in one thousand, taken promiscuously, and under all circumstances of discomfort or mal-treatment. As to its relations with malaria and malarious diseases, it suffices to remark that it is not produced, nor has I been known to spread, in the worst malarious localities.

   • [2004, Katherine White, Dengue Fever, Rosen Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 36:

     A nickname for the disease is "breakbone" because it feels like your bones are breaking.]

2. (US dialect, countable) A chicken's wishbone. [c. 1960s]
   • [2000, Robert Hendrickson, editor, The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms, Infobase Publishing, →ISBN, page 30:

     breakbone A chicken's wishbone; also called the breaking bone or pulleybone.]

Synonyms

• (dengue fever): breakbone fever
• (wishbone): breaking bone, furcula, lucky bone merrythought, pull bone, pulleybone, pulling bone, wishing bone

Adjective

breakbone (comparative more breakbone, superlative most breakbone)

1. Violent; rough and painful.
   • 1869 January, Dr. Alex M. Vedder, “Remarks on the Actual State of Medical Science in Japan”, in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, volume 57, number 113, page 47:

     Shampooing, as employed in Japan, is not exactly the vigorous breakbone manipulation of the Turks at the namman, and which makes one imagine that every joint in the body must have been dislocated.

Anagrams

• Bonebrake