Febrile

//ˈfiːbɹaɪl// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Feverish, or having a high temperature.

    "Aurora's orange sun (Baley scarcely noted the orange tinge now) was mildly warm on his back, lacking the febrile heat that Earth's sun had in summer (but, then, what was the climate and season on this portion of Aurora right now?)."

  2. 2
    Involving fever as a symptom or cause.
  3. 3
    Full of nervous energy. figuratively

    "An already febrile atmosphere within the ground before the start had been stoked still further when France's players formed an arrow formation to face down the haka, and then advanced slowly over halfway as the capacity crowd roared."

Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to or characterized by fever wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
ablazeafireardentat fever pitchboilingboiling over

Example

More examples

"The pallid cypresses seemed to twist in febrile pain."

Etymology

Borrowed from Medieval Latin febrīlis, from Latin febris (“fever”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.