Pestilence
['pestɪl(ə)ns] or ['pɛstɪləns]
Definition
(noun.) a pernicious and malign influence that is hard to get rid of; 'racism is a pestilence at the heart of the nation'; 'according to him, I was the canker in their midst'.
Checker: Roberta--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) Specifically, the disease known as the plague; hence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating.
(n.) Fig.: That which is pestilent, noxious, or pernicious to the moral character of great numbers.
Inputed by Bartholomew
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Plague, pest, BLIGHT, contagious distemper.
Inputed by Avis
Examples
- I had never before beheld one killed by pestilence. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- What the coming summer would bring, we knew not; but the present months were our own, and our hopes of a cessation of pestilence were high. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- This same pestilence, we may note, also helped to produce a century of confusion in the Western world (see § 1). H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- Such were we upon earth, wondering aghast at the effects of pestilence. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- There are set-backs, massacres, pestilence; but the story is, on the whole, one of enlargement. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- He desired to go; each day he expected to be infected by pestilence, each day he was unable to resist the gentle violence of Adrian's detention. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- But Isis, we are told, is no longer Isis but Hariti, a pestilence goddess whom Buddha converted and made benevolent. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- But pestilence was absent from among them. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- The God sends down his angry plagues from high, Famine and pestilence in heaps they die. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- During the progress of the pestilence he had entered upon various schemes, by which to acquire adherents and power. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- They flee man as man flees a pestilence. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan of the Apes.
- Comets, meteors, an d eclipses were considered as omens portending pestilence, national disaster, or the fate of kings. Walter Libby. An Introduction to the History of Science.
- Mexico laid waste by the united effects of storm, pestilence and famine. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- Pestilence and disease were met by Imperial hospitals and government physicians. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- It was the peculiar and dreadful distinction of our visitation, that none who had been attacked by the pestilence had recovered. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- There may have been prehistoric pestilences. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- The Englishman Bede, one of the few writers of the time, records pestilences in England in 664, 672, 678, and 683, no fewer than four in twenty years! H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
Typed by Garrett