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Definition of "phthiriasis" [phthi•ri•a•sis]

  • Infestation with lice, especially crab lice; pediculosis. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "phthiriasis" in a sentence
  • "Schiödte, a Danish entomologist, has, it seems to us, forever settled the question as to whether the louse bites the flesh or sucks blood, and decides a point interesting to physicians, _i. e._, that the loathsome disease called phthiriasis is a nonentity."
  • "Aeneas was dreadfully tossed and endangered by a storm; and perhaps for the same reason Herod, that tyrant and cruel King of Judaea, finding himself near the pangs of a horrid kind of death — for he died of a phthiriasis, devoured by vermin and lice; as before him died L. Sylla, Pherecydes the Syrian, the preceptor of"
  • "Pediculosis: a state of lousiness, or the abnormal condition caused by the multiplication of lice on the body: sec phthiriasis."