pestilence
n. uncountablen. a very serious and deadly disease that spreads quickly through a large area. It is an old-fashioned word often used in stories or history books.
n. a highly infectious and deadly disease that spreads rapidly through a population. Often used in historical or literary contexts to describe epidemics like the plague.
The village was saved from a terrible pestilence by the new medicine.
Historians often study how medieval societies reacted to the sudden arrival of a deadly pestilence that wiped out entire families.
The poet used the metaphor of pestilence to describe the rapid spread of misinformation across the internet, comparing digital viruses to the biological ones that once ravaged the countryside.
From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin pestilentia (“plague”), from pestilens (“infected, unwholesome, noxious”); equivalent to pestilent + -ence.