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Pestilence   /pˈɛstələns/   Listen
Pestilence

noun
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.  Synonyms: pest, pestis, plague.
2.
Any epidemic disease with a high death rate.  Synonyms: pest, plague.
3.
A pernicious and malign influence that is hard to get rid of.  Synonym: canker.  "According to him, I was the canker in their midst"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pestilence" Quotes from Famous Books



... as a curious fact, showing the strange and outlandish character of the pestilence, that the birds and animals which feed on human flesh generally shunned the bodies of those who died of the plague, though they might have eaten their fill, for hundreds were left unburied. The very vultures fled from the infected city, and hardly one was ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... hand to tend them. Great man-eating birds hovered about the camp or skulked about, heavy with gorging, amongst the hovels, and no one had public spirit enough to give them battle. The stink of the place rose up to heaven as a foul incense inviting a pestilence. There was no order, no trace of strong command anywhere. With three hundred well-disciplined troops it seemed to me that I could have sent those poor desperate hordes flying in ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... to this age, Ovid teaches, in the seventh chapter of Metamorphoses, in that fable where he writes how Cephalus of Athens came to AEacus the King for help in the war which Athens had with the Cretans. He shows that AEacus, an old man, was prudent when, having, through pestilence caused by corruption of the air, lost almost all his people, he wisely had recourse to God, and besought of Him the restoration of the dead; and for his wisdom, which in patience possessed him and caused him to turn to God, his people were ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... military urgencies alone that many men can be brought to consent to the collective endowment of research, to public education and to a thousand interferences with their private self-seeking. Just as the pestilence of cholera was necessary before men could be brought to consent to public sanitation, so perhaps the dread of foreign violence is an unavoidable spur in an age of chaotic industrial production in order that men may be ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... and possessed great strength and agility. In his first African journey he traversed three thousand miles, for the most part on foot, through an unknown and barbarous country, exposed to continued unremitting toil, to the perils of the way, to storm, hunger, pestilence, and the attacks of wild beasts and savage natives, supported by a dauntless spirit, and by a fortitude which never forsook him. Amply did he possess the indispensable qualities of a traveller, keenness of observation, mental energy, unflinching perseverance, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park


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