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Foreign. It's the Word of the Day podcast for January 2nd. Today's Word is Febrile, also pronounced febrile and spelled F E B R I L E. Febrile is an adjective. It's a medical term meaning marked or caused by fever. Feverish. It's sometimes used figuratively, as in a febrile political climate. Here's the word used in a sentence from the Guardian, peppered with exclamation marks. Breathless and febrile, this is an utterly mesmeric account of how one man's crimes can affect an entire community. The English language has had the word fever for as long as the language has existed. That is about a thousand years. The related adjective feverish has been around since the 14th century. But that didn't stop the 17th century medical reformer Noah Briggs from admonishing physicians to care for their febrile patients properly. Biggs apparently thought his medical writing required a word that clearly nodded to a Latin heritage and called upon the Latin adjective febrilis from febrez, meaning fever. It's a tradition that English has long kept. Look to Latin for words that sound technical or elevated. But fever, too, comes from Febreze. It first appeared, albeit with a different spelling, in an Old English translation of a book about the medicinal qualities of various plan by Biggs time it had shed all obvious hallmarks of its Latin ancestry. Febrile, meanwhile, continues to be used in medicine in a variety of ways, including in references to such things as febrile seizures and the febrile phase of an illness. The word has also developed figurative applications, matching those of feverish, as in a febrile atmosphere. With your Word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit merriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay and trending word lookups.