Black Death

noun

1. a form of bubonic plague that spread over Europe in the 14th century and killed an estimated quarter of the population.

Black Death

noun

1. the Black Death
   a form of bubonic plague pandemic in Europe and Asia during the 14th century, when it killed over 50 million people See bubonic plague

Black Death

1. An epidemic of plague, especially its bubonic form, that occurred in outbreaks between 1347 and 1400. It originated in Asia and then swept through Europe, where it killed about a third of the population.

Black Death

1. A disease that killed nearly half the people of western Europe in the fourteenth century. It was a form of the bubonic plague .

Word History and Origins

Origin of Black Death¹

First recorded in 1815–25

Example Sentences

"Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe blaming the Jews from the Black Death to the Spanish Inquisition to the space lasers will all go away if Israel does right. And peace will reign and people will no longer baselessly blame the Jews when things don't work out exactly the way they want them to."

From Salon

During the last thousand years, the first of these transformative cataclysms was certainly the Black Death of 1350, one of history’s greatest waves of mass mortality via disease, this one spread by rats carrying infected lice from Central Asia across Europe.

From Salon

Admittedly, the destruction caused by the Napoleonic wars may seem relatively modest compared to the devastation of the Black Death, but the long-term changes engendered by Britain’s industrial revolution and the finance capitalism that emerged from those wars proved far more compelling than the earlier era’s merchant companies and missionary endeavors.

From Salon

Seven hundred years later, humanity could be facing another catastrophe on the scale of the Black Death, one that might, once again, set the world in motion.

From Salon

The Black Death ended the Middle Ages with its system of localized states and relatively stable regional empires, while unleashing the gathering forces of merchant capital, maritime trade and military technology to literally set the world in motion.

From Salon