Poxed

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. The condition resulting from an infection that causes pockmarks, often altering the skin's appearance
2. A state resulting from an infectious illness that creates pitted markings on the skin's surface
3. Having been infected by a disease that causes scarring or pockmarks on the skin

Etymology: "Poxed" is the past form of "pox," so its history is really the history of the noun. "Pox" is the plural of "pock," the old word for a pustule or the mark a pustule leaves on the skin. English speakers treated the plural as a singular, so the lump became a disease name in its own right, and the pockmarks left behind by smallpox and similar illnesses became the image that defined the word. The most surprising twist is that "pox" also became a curse. Wishing someone a pox was a way of wishing them a literal infection, and over time the word itself came to mean a curse or plague-like affliction, so that people might say "a pox on you" with no thought of skin at all. The curse sense grew out of the disease sense through this kind of metonymy, where the name of the sickness stands in for the misfortune it brings. "Poxed" therefore describes someone or something marked by that same pitting, the skin scarred by the infection the word once named.