- typhoid (adj.)
- 1800, literally "resembling typhus," from typhus + suffix from Greek -oeides "like," from eidos "form, shape" (see -oid). The noun is from 1861, a shortened form of typhoid fever (1845), so called because it was originally thought to be a variety of typhus. Typhoid Mary (1909) was Mary Mallon (d.1938), a typhoid carrier who worked as a cook and became notorious after it was learned she had unwittingly infected hundreds in U.S.