pestilence
Americannoun
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a deadly or virulent epidemic disease.
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something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
noun
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any epidemic outbreak of a deadly and highly infectious disease, such as the plague
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such a disease
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an evil influence or idea
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of pestilence
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin pestilentia, from pestilent-, stem of pestilēns “unhealthy, noxious” ( see pestilent) + -ia -y 3 ( def. )
Explanation
Pestilence means a deadly and overwhelming disease that affects an entire community. The Black Plague, a disease that killed over thirty percent of Europe's population, was certainly a pestilence. Pestilence is also one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation (which is part of The Bible). When pestilence rides into town, you want to be somewhere far, far away. Whereas a person gets the flu, a nation experiences a pestilence. A disease that causes widespread crop damage or animal deaths can also be called a pestilence.
Vocabulary lists containing pestilence
"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe
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Much Ado About Nothing
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Twelfth Night
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Without them, we’d live in a world of putridity and pestilence.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
Invasive species came in all guises: foreign pestilence, foreign capital, and the developers.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
Those concepts interlace in his ossuary, enlivened when he plays his tenderly kept records, remnants of human joy all but lost to a Rage pestilence.
From Salon ● Jan. 23, 2026
From the Middle Ages on, Paris’ early underground waste channels were a wellspring of public fascination — and a source of pestilence, criminality and existential dread.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 16, 2024
There was word that the pestilence crawled towards the city from the north shore, and that soon, in the alleys, we should be dying of it.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
