Lurgy
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A fictitious, highly infectious disease; sometimes as a reference to flu-like symptoms. Ireland, UK, slang
"the dreaded lurgy"
- 2 Any uncategorised disease with symptoms similar to a cold or flu that renders one unable to work. Ireland, UK, slang
"Blocked nose, watering eyes, a sore throat – the signs of a cold are all too familiar. Here are seven ways to dodge the lurgy, or shrug it off sooner[.]"
Example
More examples"Tom's caught some kind of lurgy."
Etymology
A nonsense word popularized by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, scriptwriters for a 9 November 1954 programme of The Goon Show, “Lurgi Strikes Britain”, about the outbreak of a highly dangerous, highly infectious and—as it turns out—highly fictitious disease known as “the Dreaded Lurgi”. Folk etymologies include: * a corruption and contraction of allergy. This is not supported by the use of the hard /ɡ/ in lurgi (rhyming with Fergie), as allergy has a soft 'g' /dʒ/. * based on the Northern English dialectal phrase fever-lurgy (“lazy or idle”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.