Below is a short essay I made during a writting class. I would like to share with YoYos.
Verb with Diseases
Since HAVE and GET can be used for any kinds of diseases, I only focus on CATCH, CONTRACT, DEVELOP, COME DOWN WITH, and PICK UP.
Information from corpus and dictionaries:
Catch: especially to get an illness from another person, or because you have been bitten by an insect.
Ex: a cold, chill, fever (scarlet fever / yellow fever / typhoid fever / rheumatic fever), meningitis, malaria, pneumonia, AIDS (virus)
Contract: [formal] to get a serious illness.
Ex: tuberculosis, bronchitis, AIDS, cancer, malaria, cholera, typhoid, smallpox, rheumatic
Develop: to gradually become ill with a particular illness, but not by catching it from some one else.
Ex: diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, tumor, cancer, varicose veins, asthma, pneumonia, tetanus, septicemia
Come down with: to become ill with an illness which is not serious, especially when so that you have to stop work or stay in bed.
Ex: a cold, flu, measles, cowpox
Pick up: [informal] to get a not very serious illness such as a cold, a stomach problem, used especially when you want to say where you get it.
Conclusion:
1. Some diseases, such as malaria, typhoid, and rheumatic, can be used with CONTRACT or CATCH because of their seriousness and the ways you get the diseases.
2. Some diseases, such as bronchitis, tuberculosis, and cancer, can be used with CONTRACT or DEVELOP because of their seriousness and the ways you get the diseases.
3. In general, most diseases cannot be used with both CATCH and DEVELOP at the same time because the ways we get the diseases are opposite in CATCH and DEVELOP. However, two diseases are exceptions. The first exception is Pneumonia. It can be used with both CATCH and DEVELOP. The second exception is AIDS. It seems like that when people mention AIDS, sometimes it means AIDS virus. Other times, it means AIDS. Because we catch the AIDS virus and develop AIDS, both CATCH and DEVELOP can be used with AIDS.
4. We use COME DOWN WITH or PICK UP for not serious diseases. When we want to emphasize the place we get the disease, use PICK UP. When we want to emphasize we take a few days of because of the disease, use COME DOWN WITH.