Typhoid Mary

noun

1. a carrier or transmitter of anything undesirable, harmful, or catastrophic.

Typhoid Mary

¹

1. A person likely to cause a disaster; from Mary Mallen, an Irish woman in the United States who was discovered to be a carrier of typhoid fever .

Typhoid Mary

²

1. A cook who carried typhoid fever and passed it on to many people in and around New York City in the early twentieth century.

Notes

The term is often applied to the carrier of a contagious disease , or, more generally, to anyone who brings bad luck: “The last three insurance companies I had policies with folded. I feel like Typhoid Mary.”

Word History and Origins

Origin of Typhoid Mary¹

First recorded in 1905–10; so called after Mary Mallon (1869–1938), Irish-born cook in the U.S., who was found to be a typhoid carrier

Idioms and Phrases

A carrier or spreader of misfortune, as in I swear he's a typhoid Mary; everything at the office has gone wrong since he was hired . This expression alludes to a real person, Mary Manson, who died in 1938. An Irish-born servant, she transmitted typhoid fever to others and was referred to as “typhoid Mary” from the early 1900s. The term was broadened to other carriers of calamity in the mid-1900s.

Example Sentences

“I was contaminated, like Typhoid Mary,” he told me.

From Washington Post

“At the beginning, really, we were just going about living our lives as normal people, and all of a sudden, we were sort of Typhoid Mary in Newsweek magazine,” he said.

From Seattle Times

Zuboff calls Sandberg the “Typhoid Mary” of surveillance capitalism, the term for profiting off the collection of data from social media users’ online behavior, preferences, shared data and relationships.

From Seattle Times

“Typhoid Mary came up all the time but she was isolated, not quarantined,” Manaugh says.

From Los Angeles Times

He wrote a whole book about Typhoid Mary.

From Washington Post