chicken-pox

A child has red spots from chicken-pox.

Definition

1. Noun (uncountable):
   • Viral infection: "chicken-pox" is a mild, highly contagious disease, typically affecting children, characterized by an itchy rash of small, red spots that develop into blisters and then crust over.

Usage Examples

• (A contagious viral illness causing skin spots.)
• (The disease's typical severity.)
• (The stage of the infection when spots form scabs.)

Advanced Usage

• "to have chicken-pox": to be infected with the disease.
  • He had chicken-pox when he was five years old. (He experienced the illness at that age.)
• "chicken-pox vaccine": a medical injection that prevents chicken-pox.
  • The chicken-pox vaccine is now part of the routine childhood immunization schedule. (A preventive shot given to children.)

Variants and Related Words

• Chickenpox (n): an alternative spelling of "chicken-pox" (often written as one word without a hyphen).
  • The doctor diagnosed the rash as chickenpox. (Another spelling of the same disease.)
• Postherpetic neuralgia (n) (not a direct variant, but a related complication): persistent nerve pain after shingles, which is caused by the same virus (varicella-zoster) as chicken-pox.
  • Older adults who had chicken-pox may develop postherpetic neuralgia after shingles. (A painful condition linked to the virus.)

Synonyms

• Varicella: the medical term for chicken-pox.
  • Varicella is the official name for the chicken-pox virus. (The scientific name.)
• Waterpox: an informal, rare synonym (not commonly used).
  • Some old texts refer to chicken-pox as waterpox. (An outdated term.)

Related Idioms

• There are no common idioms or phrasal verbs directly using "chicken-pox." However, the word "chicken" in other idioms (e.g., "chicken out") is unrelated.