PESTILENCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pestilence mean? 

• PESTILENCE (noun)
  The noun PESTILENCE has 3 senses:

1. a serious (sometimes fatal) infection of rodents caused by Yersinia pestis and accidentally transmitted to humans by the bite of a flea that has bitten an infected animal

2. any epidemic disease with a high death rate

3. a pernicious and malign influence that is hard to get rid of

  Familiarity information: PESTILENCE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PESTILENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A serious (sometimes fatal) infection of rodents caused by Yersinia pestis and accidentally transmitted to humans by the bite of a flea that has bitten an infected animal

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

pest; pestilence; pestis; plague

Hypernyms ("pestilence" is a kind of...):

epidemic disease (any infectious disease that develops and spreads rapidly to many people)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pestilence"):

bubonic plague; glandular plague; pestis bubonica (the most common form of the plague in humans; characterized by chills, prostration, delirium and the formation of buboes in the armpits and groin; does not spread from person to person)

plague pneumonia; pneumonic plague; pulmonic plague (a rapidly progressive and frequently fatal form of the plague that can spread through the air from person to person; characterized by lung involvement with chill, bloody expectoration and high fever)

septicemic plague (an especially dangerous and generally fatal form of the plague in which infecting organisms invade the bloodstream; does not spread from person to person)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any epidemic disease with a high death rate

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

pest; pestilence; plague

Hypernyms ("pestilence" is a kind of...):

epidemic disease (any infectious disease that develops and spreads rapidly to many people)

Derivation:

pestilent; pestilential (likely to spread and cause an epidemic disease)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A pernicious and malign influence that is hard to get rid of

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

canker; pestilence

Context example:

according to him, I was the canker in their midst

Hypernyms ("pestilence" is a kind of...):

influence (a cognitive factor that tends to have an effect on what you do)

Derivation:

pestilent (exceedingly harmful)

 Context examples 

That night they cut up and removed the bodies, not to eat—for the poison was still active—but lest they should breed a pestilence.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an hospital.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)