Febrile

The Word of the Day for September 29 is "febrile."

febrile: (adjective) Of, relating to, or characterized by fever.

Synonyms: feverish

Usage: The mother took her febrile and sweating child to the pediatrician.

Relevance to my life: When I was suffering from a double shot of the flu and pneumonia, I spent last November in an otherworldly condition; one day as I stood, dazed and floaty, looking out the kitchen window, I saw three huge crows fighting over an object which appeared to me, in my febrile state, to be a blackened human skull. Eventually, I saw the tattered black Hefty garbage bag fluttering in the grass and realized that it was not a skull, but some hunk of food stolen from the neighbor's uncovered trash can.*

What it is NOT: feeble (adjective) weak, lame, in a weakened state -

He gave me a febrile excuse for breaking up with me: he just didn't feel like making the effort to go out any more. wrong

It's possible from context that febrile and feeble may be confused with one another since when a person has a fever he may also be in a weakened state.

Three days of a rattling cough and high fever left him feeble and shaking, unable to stand for very long, even in the shower.

*See what a fever of 103.5 and an over-active imagination can do for you? Although people seem to be hard-wired to see faces out of abstract patterns; it's a survival instinct which helps an infant focus on smiling parental faces, I tend to see gargoyles and skulls popping out of abstractness in acoustical tiles, water spots on wallpaper and plaster, and irregularities in the warp and woof of carpeting. I can't even tell you what crazy stuff I saw in the shadows creeping and thrashing on my walls at night.




Speaking of fevers: