PESTIFEROUS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does pestiferous mean? 

• PESTIFEROUS (adjective)
  The adjective PESTIFEROUS has 4 senses:

1. contaminated with infecting organisms

2. likely to spread and cause an epidemic disease

3. tending to corrupt or pervert

4. causing irritation or annoyance

  Familiarity information: PESTIFEROUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PESTIFEROUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Contaminated with infecting organisms

Synonyms:

dirty; pestiferous

Context example:

obliged to go into infected rooms

Similar:

infected; septic (containing or resulting from disease-causing organisms)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Likely to spread and cause an epidemic disease

Synonyms:

pestiferous; pestilent; pestilential; plaguey

Context example:

plaguey fevers

Similar:

epidemic ((especially of medicine) of disease or anything resembling a disease; attacking or affecting many individuals in a community or a population simultaneously)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Tending to corrupt or pervert

Synonyms:

corruptive; perversive; pestiferous

Similar:

evil (morally bad or wrong)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Causing irritation or annoyance

Synonyms:

annoying; bothersome; galling; irritating; nettlesome; pesky; pestering; pestiferous; plaguey; plaguy; teasing; vexatious; vexing

Context example:

it is vexing to have to admit you are wrong

Similar:

disagreeable (not to your liking)

 Context examples 

He had hitched his wagon to a star and been landed in a pestiferous marsh.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“That comes—as you call it—of being arrant asses,” retorted the doctor, “and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though of course it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)