tubercular

Latin tuberculum (“diminutive of tuber (“lump”)”) +‎ -ar

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

tubercular (comparative more tubercular, superlative most tubercular)

1. Of, pertaining to, or having tuberculosis.

   Synonym: tuberculous

   • 1924 November 24, “Critical Inspection of a Myth”, in Time:

     As he grew older, his tubercular thinness tended toward emaciation.

   • 1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel‎, Part One, Chapter 1:

     He set up business in Sydney, the little capital city of one of the middle Southern states, lived soberly and industriously under the attentive eye of a folk still raw with defeat and hostility, and finally, his good name founded and admission won, he married a gaunt tubercular spinstress, ten years his elder, but with a nest egg and an unshakable will to matrimony.

   • 1941, Emily Carr, chapter 5, in Klee Wyck‎:

     There had been, too, all the long weeks of Rosie’s tubercular dying to go through.

   • 2012, Will Self, “Kafka’s Wound, A digital essay” London Review of Books website,

     The adult Kafka – the Kafka vermiculated by tubercular bacilli after having been played on for decades, as a demonic organist might press fleshy keys and pull bony stops, by his own relentless neurasthenia – reached a mystical appreciation of his youthful velleity, characterising it as a desire both to expertly hammer together a table and at the same time ‘do nothing’.

2. Relating to or reminiscent of the wheezing sounds associated with the breathing of tuberculosis patients.
   • 1994, John DeChancie, David Bischoff, chapter 9, in Masters of Spacetime, Crossroad Press, published 2015:

     The engine heaved. […] The thing sounded like a tubercular tugboat engine without a muffler.

   • 2007, Declan Hughes, chapter 1, in The Colour of Blood‎:

     Crows on the roof beat their wings and made their low tubercular moan.

   • 2016 October 8, Brad Wheeler, “Old Dylan and Stones deliver at new Desert Trip music festival”, in The Globe and Mail:

     His voice? A raspy, nasal and welcoming instrument, with a tubercular kind of charisma.

3. Tuberculate.
   • 1930, Emily Pelloe, West Australian Orchids‎, page 13:

     “ORANGE ORCHID” “SPOTTED ORCHID” […] Dorsal appendage of the hood of column smooth, tubercular and notched at the end.

tubercular (plural tuberculars)

1. (dated) A person who has tuberculosis.
   • 1954, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations, Hearings, page 907:

     They are the tuberculars, the psychiatrics, and the older men suffering from chronic conditions. All of those men are totally disabled.

tubercular (not comparable)

1. tubercular, tuberculose