a. [f. as prec. + -OUS.]

1

  † 1.  Ill of fever; affected by fever; = FEVERISH 1.

2

1398.  Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. xcix. (1495), 665. Swete pomegarnades easith … feuerous men.

3

c. 1400.  Lanfranc’s Cirurg., 222. It wole make a man yvel disposed & feverous.

4

1620.  Venner, Via Recta, ii. 24. They are lesse hurtfull, for such as are feuorous, then other wines are.

5

1798.  Coleridge, Dest. Nations, Poems, I. 206.

        Lenient of care, thy songs, O Peace! are sweet,
As after showers the perfumed gale of eve,
That flings the cool drops on a feverous cheek;
And gay thy grassy altar piled with fruits.

6

  transf. and fig.  1800.  Hurdis, The Favourite Village, 101.

        The fev’rous kettle with internal coil
And ebullition totters on the bars,
Forth sending furious from its brazen lungs
Intense evaporation, fog and dew
Instinct with fire.

7

1820.  Keats, Eve St. Agnes, x.

        All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords
Will storm his heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel.

8

  2.  fig. = FEVERISH 2.

9

1603.  Shaks., Meas. for M., III. i. 75.

            I do feare thee Claudio, and I quake,
Least thou a feauorous life shouldst entertaine.

10

1649.  Milton, Eikon., xv. (1851), 450. But had he as well known how to distinguish between the venerable gray hairs of ancient religion and the old scurf of superstition, between the wholesome heat of well governing and the feverous rage of tyrannizing, his judgment in state physic had been of more authority.

11

1749.  Smollett, Regicide, V. i.

                    O! what a wretch is he,
Whose fev’rous life, devoted to the gloom
Of superstition, feels th’ incessant throb
Of ghastly panic!

12

1817.  Coleridge, Biog. Lit., I. ix. 139. A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimulated into fev’rous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselyting.

13

1865.  Ruskin, Sesame, p. xv. The valley of Cluse, through which unhappy travellers consent now to be invoiced, packed in baskets like fish, so only that they may cheaply reach, in the feverous haste which has become the law of their being, the glen of Chamouni.

14

  3.  Of, pertaining to, of the nature of, or characteristic of a fever; = FEVERISH 3.

15

1393.  Gower, Conf., II. 147.

        Right so this feverous malady,
Which caused is of fantasy.

16

1503.  Hawes, The Example of Virtue, xii. 237.

        Exylynge the feuerous frosty coldnes
And depryuynge the noxyall derkenes.

17

1576.  Baker, Jewell of Health, 4 a. The outwarde part of the Nettle procureth ytching and burning, in that part of the bodie, as the same toucheth: where contrarywise, the iuice drawen out of the inner substance, applyed on the arteries of the armes, doth refresh and coole the burning of the Feuer, or feuerous burning of the heart.

18

1645.  Bp. Hall, Remedy Discontents, 55. They finde themselves overtaken with feverous distempers, the Physitian must succeed the Cook; and a second sicknesse must cure the first.

19

1796–7.  Coleridge, Poems (1862), 30.

        I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in morning’s feverous doze.

20

1820.  Keats, Isabella, xliv.

                  What feverous hectic flame
Burns in thee, child?

21

1864.  Tennyson, En. Ard., 230. After a night of feverous wakefulness.

22

  4.  Apt to cause fever.

23

1626.  Bacon, Sylva, § 786. Southerne Winds, blowing much, without Raine, doe cause a Feuourous Disposition of the Yeare.

24

1827.  H. Coleridge, On Infancy, in Lit. World, 21 March (1890).

        Yet many a tear the careful mother sheds
  When dubious ills assault that life so frail,
The feverous summer’s beam alike she dreads
  And the chill whistle of the winter’s wail.

25

1850.  Kingsley, Alt. Locke, xli.

        Hark! from wasted moor and fen,
Feverous alley, workhouse den,
Swells the wail of Englishmen:
‘Work! or the grave!’

26

1890.  F. W. Farrar, Nero and St. Benedict, in Longman’s Mag., XIV. July, 284. He [Nero] was glad, as Horace had been, to retire from the feverous autumn and burning summer to a scene secluded as the Capreæ of Tiberius, where, unobserved by any but the kindred spirits which he gathered round him, he could glut himself in all shamelessness and folly.

27

  Hence Feverously adv.

28

a. 1631.  Donne, Poems (1650), 77.

        Nor by th’ eye’s water know a malady
Desperately hot, or changing feverously.

29

1829.  Anniversary, The Poet, 249.

        Or he, who for ambition all hath sold,
  And feverously grasps at a splendid loss,
  To whom in vain her stores may Nature toss,
Her bosom open, and her eye unfold?

30

1879.  G. Macdonald, P. Faber, III. i. 4. She had but one change of mood: either she would talk feverously, or sit in the gloomiest silence, now and then varied with a fit of abandoned weeping.

31