whooping-cough, hooping-cough
(ˈhuːpɪŋkɒf, -ɔː-)
A contagious disease chiefly affecting children, and characterized by short, violent, and convulsive coughs, followed by a long sonorous inspiration called the hoop (whoop); the chincough.
| α 1739 E. Montagu Corr. (1906) I. 37 One little boy had whooping cough. 1755 Johnson, Hooping-cough,..(or whooping cough, from hoop, to shout). 1873 Spencer Study Sociol. iii. 55 Will it..be carried off by scarlet fever or whooping-cough? 1937 [see immunotherapy s.v. immuno-]. |
| β 1747 Wesley Prim. Physic (1762) 43 Chin-Cough or Hooping-Cough. 1758 Mrs. Delany in Life & Corr. 475 The Duchess of Portland's receipt for a hooping, or any nervous cough. 1802 Med. Jrnl. VIII. 426 Treatment to be adopted in the latter stages of the Hooping Cough. 1877 Roberts Handbk. Med. (ed. 3) I. 179 Hooping-Cough is generally regarded as an infectious disease, depending upon a specific poison. |