parangi
(pəˈræŋgɪ)
Also 9 parangy.
[Sinhalese parangi (lede), lit. ‘(disease of) foreigners’, i.e. the Portuguese (= Skr. phiraṅga ‘Frankish’, European), f. Pg. Frangue, name given by the Moors to Frenchmen, Spaniards, and European Christians generally (cf. Feringhee).]
The name given in Sri Lanka to a disease now known to be identical with yaws.
| 1821 H. Marshall Notes Med. Topogr. Interior Ceylon iii. 43 There is a complaint mentioned in the Kandyan medical works, called parangy lede (Parangy disease). Ibid., Parangy lede seems to have been originally intended to denominate a new disease;..it may perhaps be inferred that the term meant Portuguese disease. There is, however, no tradition among the Kandyans respecting the importation of a disease. Ibid. 44 Many of the cutaneous affections which they denominate parangy, are evidently herpetic, and cannot be referred to a syphilitic origin. 1882 Med. Times & Gaz. 14 Jan. 30/1 The diseases which parangi resembles are syphilis and its various manifestations, lupus leprosy, and frambœsia. 1913 L. Woolf Village in Jungle i. 11 There were few in the village without the filthy sores of parangi, their legs eaten out to the bone with the yellow, sweating ulcers. |