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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Dengue (pronounced with a hard g, long final e, or sometimes dengay), or breakbone fever, is the most important expanding or emerging viral disease spread by insects. There are now 50 to 100 million cases worldwide annually. It was known in China in the fifth century as “water poison”, where they recognized that it was associated with flying insects.
One of the earliest documented outbreaks occurred in a Caribbean port in 1827. During this outbreak, the Swahili word for the disease, ki denga pepo, which signifies a sudden cramplike (crumping?) seizure caused by a malign spirit1 (as opposed to what other cause, one might ask), became the West Indian Spanish word dengue. (Or was the transfer from Spanish to Swahili2?). Dengue meant “fastidious, careful”, and is thought to have been applied to accord with the gingerly movements of its arthralgic, or sore-jointed, victims.
So dengue may have started life as an eggcorn. Among the island dialects it was double-corned to the clever eggcorn, “Dandy fever”, again in reference to the affected posture and gait of sufferers3.
A more recent cornage is dinghy fever. The connection is thus made to islands and infective waters. There are about 40 legit ghits for this.
Travel blog:
To make my nightmare complete, I would be rescued by some natives from a nearby island where I picked up a strange and incurable disease like dinghy fever.
(http://www.wolverton-mountain.com/artic … factor.htm)
Medical forum:
Dinghy is very much like malaria. I got it in Vietnam from walking a round in rice paddies with cracks betwen my toes. [...] There are three types of Dinghy fever. Two of them are fatal with in a week.
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_ … nghy_fever)
Human transcription of taped interview with missionaries:
I had dinghy fever. I had the kind…they call it break-the-bone fever. I had dinghy fever.
(http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/trans/477t05.htm)
1. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no06 … mology.pdf
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denggi#_note-Gubler_1998
3. http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art … lekey=6620
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