Have Fever vs. Have a Fever

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tana from Vermont.

Well, I wanted to talk about the word fever.

So my husband and I both use the word differently.

I grew up in Vermont, and I use the word, you know, when someone’s sick, you say, you have a fever, or I have a fever.

And he grew up in Memphis and also spent a lot of time in Mississippi.

And he says it like it’s an event, like capital F fever, like do I have fever or I have fever.

I’m wondering where does that come from?

Oh, that’s really interesting.

That’s a great one.

Most people don’t notice that subtlety, actually.

It kind of just slips right by them.

There are a couple of interesting things that happen when we talk about diseases.

Sometimes they take an article.

Sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes when they take an article, they take a definite article.

For example, you don’t have flu.

You have the flu and you don’t have a flu.

It’s just the flu.

And we can go down the list of diseases that work this way.

They are specific articles that work with them or they don’t have one at all.

But there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason.

With fever, though, we had a switch.

Somewhere between the 1940s and the 1960s, we went from mostly saying, in print at least, had fever.

Martha had fever and was in bed for three days.

To saying had a fever.

Grant had a fever and he was back on the baseball field by morning.

And I think the major difference here, at least these days, is that if you have fever, you tend to be Southern.

And if you have a fever, you tend to be in the whole rest of the United States.

Now, outside of the United States, I don’t have any data, but that’s pretty consistent here.

And it looks like have fever is slowly waning even as we speak.

Year by year have a fever with the indefinite article continues to grow and become more common.

One thing that I think I see is that it depends, and you kind of hinted at this in the way that you phrased it, it kind of depends now on whether or not you feel like the symptom is a condition or an incident.

That is, is this an ongoing part of my nature or what’s happening to me, or is this a thing that I believe has a finite start and end time?

So it’s kind of about perspective as much as anything.

So like we talk about my daughter who has asthma, that she has asthma, or that she’s having an asthma attack.

Yeah.

Similar to that.

Something like that.

Okay.

So he comes by it quite honestly.

I was accusing him of being a little melodramatic.

We do have some diseases where there is also a disagreement just like with fever.

Diabetes is one of those.

So some parts of the country, again, tends to be in the South, they say, I have the diabetes or the diabetes.

They also might say, I have the sugar to mean diabetes.

But it’s really interesting to see that variability.

And I’ve also seen in the South the fever when you’re talking about a specific type like typhoid or something like that.

If it’s been going around and it’s the thing that’s much discussed.

That’s why you would need that definite article because it’s a very particular one in everyone’s mind.

Exactly. Yes.

Nice. That’s so interesting. All right.

I know, right? Language? Who knew?

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, sure. Take care.

All right. Thanks a lot, Tana.

Bye, Tana.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

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