[f. FEVER sb.1]
1. trans. To put or throw into a fever; lit. and fig. Also, † to fever (one) into.
1606. Shaks., Ant. & Cl., III. xiii. 138. The white hand of a Lady Feauer thee.
1624. Heywood, Gunaik., IX. 430. His words as they were vttered with feare, so they were heard with trembling, for they feauered her all ouer.
1689. Rycaut, Hist. Turks, II. 189. His passion not knowing which way to ease itself, feavered him into a desperate sickness, of which in a few days, phrensical and distracted, he departed this life.
1748. Thomson, Cast. Indol., II. 265.
| To his licentious wish each must be blest, | |
| With joy be fevered, snatch it as he can. |
1820. Keats, Isabella, vi.
| Still the ruddy tide | |
| Stifled his voice, and puls’d resolve away— | |
| Fever’d his high conceit of such a bride, | |
| Yet brought him to the meekness of a child: | |
| Alas! when passion is both meek and wild! |
a. 1853. Robertson, Serm., Ser. III. xx. 262. All is not yet lost, if penitence and Christ remain, to still, to humble, and to soothe a heart which sin has fevered.
1862. T. A. Trollope, Marietta, I. xvi. The week of Guido’s absence had been passed by Marietta in a state of restless misery and anxiety, tending as surely to weaken and injure the moral tone of her mind as it did to wear out and fever her body.
2. intr. To become feverish, to be seized with a fever. Also (nonce-use) of the eyes, To fever out: to start out with fever or excitement.
1754–64. Smellie, Midwif., III. 380. She fevered and died.
1791. T. Newte, Tour Eng. & Scot., 171. He never fevered with the fracture, and very soon recovered.
1820. Keats, Hyperion, I. 135.
| This passion lifted him upon his feet, | |
| And made his hands to struggle in the air, | |
| His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat, | |
| His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease. |
1827. Scott, Jrnl., 5 Jan. I waked, or aked if you please, for five or six hours I think, then fevered a little.
fig. 1814. Byron, Lara, I. xxvi.
| But ’twas a hectic tint of secret care | |
| That for a burning moment fever’d there. | |
| Ibid. (1818), Ch. Har., IV. cxxii. | |
| Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, | |
| And fevers into false creation. |
1834. Disraeli, Rev. Epick, III. vii.
| My first of Victories: strange it is how calm | |
| Flows the still current of that eager blood, | |
| That in old days, in Brienne’s cloistered shade, | |
| So oft hath fevered o’er victorious dreams. |
Hence Fevering ppl. a.
1794. J. Williams, Crying Ep., 70. That high day of fevering youth, when the heart can triumph over the understanding, and is permitted to rule alone.
1892. W. B. Scott, Autob., I. ix. 98. At this moment of fevering unrest, we heard of De Quincey being located within the debtors’ sanctuary of Holyrood.
