English

Adjective

tubercular ‎(comparative more tubercular, superlative most tubercular)

1. Of, pertaining to, or having tuberculosis.
   • 1924, “Critical Inspection of a Myth,” Time, 24 November, 1924,

     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, Klee Wyck, Chapter 5,

     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 and David Bischoff, Masters of Spacetime, Crossroad Press, 2015, Chapter 9,

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

   • 2007, Declan Hughes, The Colour of Blood, Chapter 1,

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

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

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

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

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

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