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pox

pox is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) with 2 senses. The full text of each entry is reproduced verbatim below.

Definitions

  1. 1.Strictly, a disease by pustules or eruptions of any kind, but chiefly or wholly restricted to three or four diseases, -- the smallpox, the chicken pox, and the vaccine and the venereal diseases. Note: Pox, when used without an epithet, as in imprecations, formerly signified smallpox; but it now signifies syphilis.
  2. 2.To infect with the pox, or syphilis.

Source: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).

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