Definition of "ague"

He had to capture some character and get out of that rest room before his ague got so bad that the sergeant had to carry him to and from the booth every day.

a. 1969, John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, Penguin, published 1981, page 163

He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off. "I think you have got the ague," said I. "I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he. "It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too."

1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter III, in Great Expectations […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861

'Ague and lake fever had attacked our new settlement. The men in the shanty were all down with it, and my husband was confined to his bed on each alternate day, unable to raise hand or foot, and raving in the delirium of the fever.'

1852, Susanna Moodie, Roughing it in the Bush: or, Forest Life in Canada

'Twere hard to say who fared the best: Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you! He lost his labour, I my jest: For he was drowned, and I've the ague

1810, Lord Byron, Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos

I 'scap'd with one cold fit of an ague

November 23, 1698, John Dryden, letter to Mrs Stewart

Where I'm from, people have learned that mosquitoes carry ague.

1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred