PESTILENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does pestilent mean? 

• PESTILENT (adjective)
  The adjective PESTILENT has 2 senses:

1. exceedingly harmful

2. likely to spread and cause an epidemic disease

  Familiarity information: PESTILENT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PESTILENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Exceedingly harmful

Synonyms:

baneful; deadly; pernicious; pestilent

Similar:

noxious (injurious to physical or mental health)

Derivation:

pestilence (a pernicious and malign influence that is hard to get rid of)

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)

Derivation:

pestilence (any epidemic disease with a high death rate)

 Context examples 

Where are we to be free from this pestilent race?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so loud was it with insect life.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)