PESTILENCE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Pestilence

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/pˈɛstələns/ Listen

noun

Pestilence n.

Specifically, the disease known as the plague; hence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating. "The pestilence that walketh in darkness."

Fig.: That which is pestilent, noxious, or pernicious to the moral character of great numbers. "I'll pour this pestilence into his ear."

Pestilence weed (Bot.), the butterbur coltsfoot (Petasites vulgaris), so called because formerly considered a remedy for the plague.

See images of 'Pestilence'

Etymology of 'Pestilence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Pestilence" Quotes from Famous Books

... Death! Come to the mother's when she feels For the first time her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet-song, and dance, and wine: And thou art ...

— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... leon; Min is the ruine of the high halles, The falling of the toures and of the walles Upon the minour or the carpenter: I slew Sampson in shaking the piler. Min ben also the maladies colde, The derke tresons, and the castes olde: My loking is the fader of pestilence. ...

— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... to the Gorgon spirit of death by pause, freezing or turning to stone: both of the great divinities taking their glory from the evil they have conquered; both of them, when angry, taking to men the form of the evil which is their opposite—Apollo slaying by poisoned arrow, by pestilence; Athena by cold, the ...

— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... inaugurate the league a town named Alessandria in honor of the Pope was founded on the Piedmont frontier. In the expedition of 1166-1168 Barbarossa, who had set up an antipope, captured Rome and enthroned Paschal III as pope. His triumph however, was shortened by a pestilence which decimated his troops, and thence began a series of reverses which ended in the ascendency ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... engendered. Multitudes were seen dying about the streets. Many deserted to the Spanish camp, eager to barter their liberty for bread; and the city exhibited all the extremes of squalid and disgusting wretchedness, bred by pestilence and famine among an overcrowded population. The sufferings of the citizens softened the stern heart of the alcayde, Hamet Zeli, who at length yielded to their importunities, and, withdrawing his forces into the Gebalfaro, consented ...

— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

More quotes...