tubercular
/tuˈbɝkjəlɚ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.93 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of, pertaining to, or having tuberculosis.
adj
Relating to or reminiscent of the wheezing sounds associated with the breathing of tuberculosis patients.
Example Sentences
- "As he grew older, his tubercular thinness tended toward emaciation."
- "He set up business in Sydney, the little capital city of one of the middle Southern states, lived soberly and industriously under the attentive eye of a folk still raw with defeat and hostility, and finally, his good name founded and admission won, he married a gaunt tubercular spinstress, ten years his elder, but with a nest egg and an unshakable will to matrimony."
- "There had been, too, all the long weeks of Rosie’s tubercular dying to go through."
- "2012, Will Self, “Kafka’s Wound, A digital essay” London Review of Books website, The adult Kafka – the Kafka vermiculated by tubercular bacilli after having been played on for decades, as a demonic organist might press fleshy keys and pull bony stops, by his own relentless neurasthenia – reached a mystical appreciation of his youthful velleity, characterising it as a desire both to expertly hammer together a table and at the same time ‘do nothing’."
- "The engine heaved. […] The thing sounded like a tubercular tugboat engine without a muffler."
- "Crows on the roof beat their wings and made their low tubercular moan."
Etymology
Word Breakdown
- Suffix: ar
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /tuˈbɝkjəlɚ/
- British English: /tjuˈbɜːkjələ(ɹ)/