Translation
disease, illness; sickness
Examples
.
The illness was serious.
.
The doctor recognised the disease.
perierunt.
Many died of disease.
ignota .
The cause of the illness is unknown.
.
He wrote about the diseases of the body.
Morbus, morbi, m., second declension. The case to watch is the ablative of cause with no preposition: morbo mori, morbo perire, "to die of disease". With a preposition you would be saying something else.
It is not restricted to bodies. Cicero uses morbus animi for a settled disorder of the mind, and the Stoics treated the passions as diseases in a technical sense rather than a metaphorical one. The word is unrelated to morior despite the tidy overlap in sound and subject matter. English took morbid and morbidity, but drifted: an English morbid interest is gloomy rather than diseased, so translating morbus as "morbid state" imports a mood the Latin has not got.
Where this fits
Add to review queue
Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.
Go to my review queueLatin · Free printables
morbus: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "morbus" (disease, illness; sickness): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
Free for members
The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.
Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 17.