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

pestilential - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

pestilential (comparative more pestilential, superlative most pestilential)

• Of or relating to pestilence or plague.
  • Producing, spreading, promoting or infected with pestilence; causing infection. (of people, animals, places or substances)
    • ✤ Synonym: pestiferous
    • ✤ What do you fear? Why do you shun me thus. […] I am not Pestilential, nor Leaprous.¹
    • ✤ […] the Winter keen
      Pour’d out his Waste of Snows, and Summer shot
      His pestilential Heats:²
    • ✤ The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential.³
    • ✤ Casting my eyes about, I beheld no living object; but was sensible of a very peculiar stirring far below me, amongst the whispering rushes of the pestilential swamp I had lately quitted.⁴
  • Spreading in the manner of pestilence. (of illnesses)
    • ✤ A long sicknesse will weary friends at last; but a pestilentiall sicknes auerts them from the beginning.⁵
    • ✤ […] the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential disease.⁶
  • Caused by pestilence. (of symptoms)
    • ✤ * pestilential fever; pestilential sweating*
    • ✤ The Scab, the Stench, and the Burning are terrible pestilential Symptoms,⁷
  • During which pestilence spreads. (of a period of time)
    • ✤ *Now this pestilentiall Summer being well spent, upon the approach of the Winter, and decrease of the Sicknesse, the King […] drawes nearer to the City of *London,**⁸
    • ✤ They must expect more Pestilential times,
      That lives in th’ Equinoctial of their Crimes;⁹
• (figurative) Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of pestilence).
  • ✤ Synonym: pernicious
  • ✤ But as the Poisons of the deadliest kind
    Are to their own unhappy Coasts confin’d,
    […]
    So Presby’try and Pestilential Zeal
    Can only flourish in a Common-weal.¹⁰
  • ✤ By proclaiming individuals or entire societies to be damned, by treating their convictions as pestilential heresies, church and state had deliberately loosed fanaticism and savagery on often helpless men.¹¹
• (figurative) Causing irritation or annoyance.
  • ✤ Synonyms: annoying, irritating, pestiferous, pestilent, troublesome, vexatious
  • ✤ There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs […] They’d none of ’em be missed!¹²
  • ✤ […] a species of wandering trader—a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory from the natives.¹³
  • ✤ “You are right that Authority must go. It is ridiculous— pestilential, not to be borne—that we should be ruled by an irresponsible dictator in all our essential economy!”¹⁴
  • ✤ these ostensibly pestilential visits from Mumsey¹⁵

Etymology

From Latin pestilentialis, from pestilentia.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˌpɛstɪˈlɛnʃi.əl/, /ˌpɛstɪˈlɛnʃəl/
• Audio (General American): 🔊
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

1. 1675, John Dryden, The Mistaken Husband, London: J. Magnes and R. Bentley, Act V, p. 63,${}^{[1]}$ ↩

2. a. 1749 (date written), James Thomson, “Spring”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, →OCLC, page 20: ↩

3. 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 2, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano ‎${}^{[2]}$, volume 1, London, pages 78–79: ↩

4. 1941, J. Chapman Miske, “The Thing in the Moonlight” in H. P. Lovecraft, The Tomb and Other Tales, New York: Ballantine, 1970, p. 187,${}^{[3]}$ ↩

5. 1624, John Donne, “5. Meditation”, in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions ‎${}^{[4]}$, London: Thomas Jones, page 95: ↩

6. 1783, Edward Gibbon, chapter 31, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ‎${}^{[5]}$, volume 5, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, page 292: ↩

7. 1752, George Berkeley, “An Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great-Britain”, in A Miscellany, Containing Several Tracts on Various Subjects ‎${}^{[6]}$, London: J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, page 40: ↩

8. 1651, John Milton, The Life and Reigne of King Charls ‎${}^{[7]}$, London: W. Reybold, page 9: ↩

9. 1665, John Quarles, The Citizens Flight with Their Re-call ‎${}^{[8]}$, London, page 4: ↩

10. 1687, John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther ‎${}^{[9]}$, 2nd edition, London: Jacob Tonson, Part 1, p. 14: ↩

11. 1971, George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes toward the Redefinition of Culture ‎${}^{[10]}$, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Part 2, p. 47: ↩

12. 1885, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert; Arthur Sullivan, composer, * […] The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu*, London: Chappel & Co., […], →OCLC, Act I, page 9: ↩

13. 1899, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 165, March 1899, Chapter 2, p. 480,${}^{[11]}$ ↩

14. 1966, Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ‎${}^{[12]}$, Penguin Random House, published 2018, Book 1, Chapter 2: ↩

15. 2003, Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin, London: Serpent’s Tail, published 2006, page 461: ↩