chicken pox

• chickenpox, chicken-pox

From chicken + pox, under the influence of earlier hen-pox and swinepox, which formed larger blisters.

• Rhymes: -ɒks

chicken pox (usually uncountable, plural chicken poxes)

1. (now rare, pathology) The blisters formed by the varicella zoster virus (VZV).

   Synonym: chicken pock

2. (pathology) The highly contagious airborne disease caused by initial infection with varicella zoster virus, typically causing a skin rash that forms small itchy blisters.

   Synonym: varicella

   • 2009 May 7, New York Times, page A12:

     Chickenpox parties, at which children gather so they can all be infected by a child who has the pox, are often held by parents who distrust chickenpox vaccine or want their children to have the stronger immunity that surviving a full-blown infection affords.

3. (inexact, sometimes proscribed, pathology) Any disease causing similar symptoms.

• chickenpox party

• herpes zoster, shingles

• “chickenpox, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2022.