The Collaborative International Dictionary
Phthisic \Phthis"ic\, n. Same as Phthisis.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., tysyk "of or pertaining to a wasting disease," from Old French tisike, phtisique "consumptive" (11c.), from Vulgar Latin *phthisicus, from Greek phthisikos "consumptive," from phthisis "wasting, consumption" (see phthisis). Earlier in English as a noun meaning "wasting disease of the lungs" (mid-14c.). Related: Phthisical.\n\nThe old pronunciation dropped the ph-, but this will probably recover its sound now that everyone can read.\n
Wiktionary
a. Of or relating to phthisis or tuberculosis; tubercular. n. 1 (context pathology English) A wasting illness of the lungs, such as asthma or tuberculosis; phthisis. 2 (context pathology formerly English) Any wasting disease. 3 A person suffering from phthisis. 4 Any wasting or shrinking of another body part such as, for example, the eye (phthisis bulbi).
Usage examples of "phthisic".
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS are annually spent upon the advice of physicians, in traveling expenses, and hotel bills, by sufferers from asthma, or phthisic, in seeking a change of climate that will be advantageous.
Failure is tragic, but a phthisic face hanging over the cup of the future is worse.
Lodegar fell sick of the same phthisic, Jorian persuaded him to hire Margalit to take his place in the mill, bagging the flour as it came from the millstones.
But Gloe had not enjoyed her new post a fiftnight when she caught a phthisic from some other courtier and died in three days.
A pale blur of faces, staring eyes, gaped mouths, nostrils wide for the heaving, phthisic breath, indrawn by bodies that have forgotten to breathe for a time.
Punch cures the gout, the cholic, and the phthisic, And it is to every man the very best of physic.
As we watched, a phthisic finger of lightning crackled down from a clear sky to touch the lead left cylinder.
I cured scarcely any patients of phthisic disease, though I did find a remedy for many who were suffering from similar maladies, wherefore that boast of mine, that proclamation of merit to which I had no right, worked no small profit to me, a man very little given to lying.
In his fantasies Melinda even looked different, paler, thinner, rather phthisic, very much of another world.
In heart disease there is often dyspnoea, or difficult breathing, but this is not of the nature of asthma, or phthisic.