An old-fashioned medical term for influenza or the flu; a contagious respiratory illness.
From French 'grippe,' derived from Italian 'grippa,' possibly from the verb 'grippare' (to seize). The term became prominent during the 1889-1890 Russian flu pandemic and spread through European medical communities.
Grippe is why we call the flu the 'flu'—the word itself means 'seizing' in Italian because the illness seemed to 'seize' people suddenly! The 1889 pandemic was one of history's first global health crises tracked internationally.
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