Definition of lurgy in English:


Line breaks: lurgy
Pronunciation: /ˈləːɡi

noun (plural lurgies)

British humorous
An unspecified or indeterminate illness: I had caught the dreaded lurgy
More example sentences
  • Good thing I did all that Arsenal stuff yesterday, I'm lumbered with the lurgy and feel like I have a sponge for a brain.
  • He gets whisked off to a badly-run NHS hospital, where a scabby and underpaid nurse who is ill because she can't afford blankets sneezes all over Bob's wound, giving him a nasty lurgy, and he dies.
  • I've woken up feeling thick-headed, and since I know what a sick building I work in, and since everyone else has had it before me, I'm taking the day off before the lurgy gets me.


1950s (originally spelled lurgi): used in the British radio series The Goon Show and probably invented by its writers, though possibly from an English dialect term.

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Pronunciation: ˌintərˈnesēn
destructive to both sides in a conflict