legionnaires' disease

1. 1.

   acute (sometimes fatal) lobar pneumonia caused by bacteria of a kind first recognized after an outbreak of the disease at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976; characterized by fever and muscle and chest pain and headache and chills and a dry cough

   Broaderlobar pneumonia

Questions about legionnaires' disease

What does legionnaires' disease mean?

legionnaires' disease means "acute (sometimes fatal) lobar pneumonia caused by bacteria of a kind first recognized after an outbreak of the disease at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976; characterized by fever and muscle and chest pain and headache and chills and a dry cough".

Is legionnaires' disease a common word?

legionnaires' disease is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.