From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtyphusty‧phus /ˈtaɪfəs/ noun [uncountable] MIa serious infectious disease carried by insects that live on the bodies of people and animals a typhus epidemic
Examples from the Corpus
typhus• Famine and a typhus epidemic struck in the winter of 1919-20.• Life is easier, until a typhus epidemic sweeps the school.• In the final camp, Allach, typhus struck Greenspun, Regina and Bela.• Louse-borne typhus has killed more people than have died in warfare.• Fiabhras dubh, typhus, the black fever.• My own father died of typhus in that war.• She died of typhus fever in the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary, 19 February 1868.• Helen Burns could not come walking with me, because she was ill, not with typhus but with tuberculosis.Origin typhus (1700-1800) Modern Latin Greek typhos “fever” 