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ence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating. The pestilence That walketh in darkness. Ps. xci. 6.

A pestilence which ravaged Europe and Asia in the fourteenth century.

Sexual lust; morbid carnal passion. Concupiscence like a pestilence walketh in darkness. Horne.

The destruction of any large proportion, as of people by pestilence or war. Milman.

y, or wantonly; to consume; to swallow up; to use up; to waste; to annihilate. Famine and pestilence shall devour him. Ezek. vii. 15. I waste my life and do my days devour. Spenser.

ring; lean; meager; pinched and grim. "The gaunt mastiff." Pope. A mysterious but visible pestilence, striding gaunt and fleshless across our land. Nichols.

To affict with pestilence; to infect, as with plague. [Obs.]

ctious fever; infectious clothing; infectious air; infectious vices. Where the infectious pestilence. Shak.

A sacrifice, or ceremony, by which cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by crimes, pestilence, or other cause of uncleanness, were purified.

ase; a kind of consumption; atrophy; phthisis. Pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence. Milton. Marasmus senilis Etym: [L.], progressive atrophy of the aged.

tful; mischievous; unwholesome; insalubrious; destructive; as, noisome effluvia. "Noisome pestilence." Ps. xci. 3.

te; passage; an established way; as, the path of a meteor, of a caravan, of a storm, of a pestilence. Also used figuratively, of a course of life or action. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth. Ps. xxv. 10. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Gray.

A fatal epidemic disease; a pestilence; specif., the plague. England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest. Cowper.

Having the nature or qualities of a pestilence. "Sends the pestilential vapors." Longfellow.

and has at times visited the large cities of Europe with frightful mortality; hence, any pestilence; as, the great London plague. "A plague upon the people fell." Tennyson. Cattle plague. See Rinderpest. -- Plague mark, Plague spot, a spot or mark of the plague; hence, a token of something incurable.…

Sickness; disease; pestilence; death. [Obs.] thousand slain and not of qualm ystorve [dead]. Chaucer.

e wind sweeps the snow from the hills; a freshet sweeps away a dam, timber, or rubbish; a pestilence sweeps off multitudes. The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies. Isa. xxviii. 17. I have already swept the stakes. Dryden.

Marked by tokens, or spots; as, the tokened pestilence. [Obs.] Shak.