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''pestilence'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904104805-00-⌔

pestilence - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

pestilence (countable and uncountable, plural pestilences)

  • Any epidemic disease that is highly contagious, infectious, virulent and devastating.
    • ✤ Synonyms: plague (broad sense), murrain (archaic)
    • ✤ and hit was in the realme of Logrys and soo bifelle grete pestylence & grete harme to both Realmes*
      “And it was in the realm of Logris; and so befell great pestilence and great harm to both realms.”*1
    • ✤ Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
      Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.      2
    • ✤ “Take it, Christian dogsǃ take the palaces, the gardens, the mosques, the abode of our fathers - take plague with them; pestilence is the enemy we fly; if she be your friend, hug her to your bosoms. The curse of Allah is on Stamboul, share ye her fateǃ”3
    • ✤ It was reserved for Christians to torture bread, the staff of life, bread for which children in whole districts wail, bread, the gift of pasture to the poor, bread, for want of which thousands of our fellow beings annually perish by famine; it was reserved for Christians to torture the material of bread by fire, to create a chemical and maddening poison, burning up the brain and brutalizing the soul, and producing evils to humanity, in comparison of which, war, pestilence, and famine, cease to be evils.4
    • ✤ The pestilence slew and slew, and ceased not by day or by night, and those who escaped from the pestilence were slain of the famine.5
    • ✤ The snowshoe-rabbits build up through the years until they reach a climax when they seem to be everywhere; then with dramatic suddenness their pestilence falls upon them.6
  • (archaic) Anything harmful to morals or public order.

Etymology

From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin pestilentia (“plague”), from pestilens (“infected, unwholesome, noxious”); equivalent to pestilent +‎ -ence.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈpɛstələn(t)s/, /ˈpɛstɪlən(t)s/, /ˈpɛstlən(t)s/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (US) IPA: /ˈpɛstələn(t)s/
  • Hyphenation: pes‧ti‧lence

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

  1. 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book XVII, Chapter iii, leaf 347r ↩

  2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 91:5-6: ↩

  3. 1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter II, in The Last Man. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC: ↩

  4. 1831 July 15, “Of the Blood”, in Western Journal of Health ‎, volume 4, number 1, L. B. Lincoln, page 38: ↩

  5. 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC: ↩

  6. 1949, Bruce Kiskaddon, George R. Stewart, Earth Abides: ↩