yellow fever

Pronunciation

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Noun

yellow fever (uncountable)

1. (pathology) An acute febrile illness of tropical regions, caused by a flavivirus (Yellow fever virus) and spread by certain mosquitoes, characterised by jaundice, black vomit and the absence of urination.

   Synonyms: (obsolete) black vomit, (obsolete) yellow jack, (obsolete) Bulam fever

   Hypernym: mosquito-borne disease

   • 2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 257:

     The town up the road was overcome by yellow fever, he said. All travelers warned away.

2. (figurative, slang) An attraction to ethnically East Asian men or women, expressed by non-East Asian (especially white European male) people.

   Synonym: Asian fever

   Hyponym: Japanese fever

   Coordinate terms: Arab fever, black fever, blue fever, jungle fever, white fever, Indian fever

   • 2015, “In This B*tch”, in WORLDWIDE, performed by Jay Park:

     Your girl want me, we both know / Cause she got yellow fever

3. (figurative, dated) A lust for gold; an obsession with seeking gold ore.

   Synonym: gold fever

   • 1910, Giacomo Puccini, La Fanciulla Del West: The Girl of the Golden West:

     He's got the yellow fever; Once get the sight of gold and you are poisoned.

   • 1951, George Peter Hammond, The Larkin Papers, Univ of California Press:

     An onze a day, two a day, or three—every one has the gold or yellow fever. Last night several of the most respectible American residents of this town arrived home from a visit to the gold regions.

   • 1963, Robert Raine Geyer, Death Trails in Bolivia to Faith Triumphant:

     But the true yellow fever that has abounded in the lower gold-bearing valleys around Guanay can possibly illustrate in sickness what takes place in actuality among the sons of men who are seduced by the lust for gold.

   • 2000 October 10, W. Jacobson, Dickens and the Children of Empire, Springer, →ISBN, pages 68–69:

     In the stories he wrote and published about the gold rush, Dickens does not resolve characters' feelings of class resentment so much as explain them in non-political terms […] Dickens spreads this strain of 'yellow fever' among his characters, making their labour unrest seem both understandable and pathological.

Further reading

• “yellow fever n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present