SCROFULOUS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does scrofulous mean? 

• SCROFULOUS (adjective)
  The adjective SCROFULOUS has 3 senses:

1. afflicted with scrofula

2. morally contaminated

3. having a diseased appearance resembling scrofula

  Familiarity information: SCROFULOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SCROFULOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Afflicted with scrofula

Similar:

ill; sick (affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function)

Derivation:

scrofula (a form of tuberculosis characterized by swellings of the lymphatic glands)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Morally contaminated

Context example:

denounce the scrofulous wealth of the times

Similar:

immoral (deliberately violating accepted principles of right and wrong)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Having a diseased appearance resembling scrofula

Context example:

our canoe...lay with her scrofulous sides on the shore

Similar:

ugly (displeasing to the senses)

 Context examples 

I could plainly discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec foemina casta; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, “that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others, needless to mention.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)