pestilential
/ˌpɛstɪˈlɛnʃi.əl/
pestilential means of or relating to pestilence or plague.; Producing, spreading, promoting or infected with pestilence; causing infection. (of people, animals, places or substances). It carries an Arena rating of 1706, earned across 9 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, pestilential ranks #118 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,783 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #2,935 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #3,212 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
pestilential is pronounced /ˌpɛstɪˈlɛnʃi.əl/.
Why “pestilential” is a great word
Of, relating to, or tending to cause a deadly epidemic disease. From the Latin pestilentia ("plague, pestilence") and the adjectival suffix -alis, via Middle English and Medieval Latin pestilentialis, first recorded in English use in the 14th century. Unlike "noxious," which broadly suggests harm, or "contagious," which merely describes transmission, "pestilential" evokes a specific, apocalyptic miasma. It is the fetid air rising from a marsh at dusk, the clammy heat of a sickroom where the air feels thick with death, and the silent vacancy of a village street—nature not in error, but in wrath, turning the very atmosphere into an agent of erasure.
Etymology
From Latin pestilentialis, from pestilentia.
adj
- Of or relating to pestilence or plague.; Producing, spreading, promoting or infected with pestilence; causing infection. (of people, animals, places or substances)e.g.“1675, John Dryden, The Mistaken Husband, London: J. Magnes and R. Bentley, Act V, p. 63,
What do you fear? Why do you shun me thus. […] I am not Pestilential, nor Leaprous.”
- Of or relating to pestilence or plague.; Spreading in the manner of pestilence. (of illnesses)e.g.“A long sicknesse will weary friends at last; but a pestilentiall sicknes auerts them from the beginning.” — 1624, John Donne, “5. Meditation”, in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, London: Thomas Jones, page 95:
- Of or relating to pestilence or plague.; Caused by pestilence. (of symptoms)e.g.“pestilential fever; pestilential sweating”
- Of or relating to pestilence or plague.; During which pestilence spreads. (of a period of time)e.g.“Now this pestilentiall Summer being well spent, upon the approach of the Winter, and decrease of the Sicknesse, the King […] drawes nearer to the City of London,” — 1651, John Milton, The Life and Reigne of King Charls, London: W. Reybold, page 9:
- Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of pestilence).e.g.“But as the Poisons of the deadliest kind
Are to their own unhappy Coasts confin’d,
[…]
So Presby’try and Pestilential Zeal
Can only flourish in a Common-weal.” — 1687, John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, 2nd edition, London: Jacob Tonson, Part 1, p. 14:
- Causing irritation or annoyance.e.g.“There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs […] They’d none of ’em be missed!” — 1885, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert; Arthur Sullivan, composer, […] The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu, London: Chappel & Co., […], →OCLC, Act I, page 9:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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