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Pestilence is an old, heavy word for a disease that through a population and kills many people — what history books call a plague. You will hear it in the Bible, in older literature, and in dramatic writing, not in a doctor’s office. A doctor today says epidemic or pandemic; a friend with the flu does not have a pestilence. When people do use it now, they sometimes stretch it for anything they feel is spreading and rotten, even a bad idea, but the core picture is still a killing disease on the move.
瘟疫
組成From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin pestilentia (“plague”), from pestilens (“infected, unwholesome”); equivalent to pestilent + -ence.
同家族的字
- pestilentthe older adjective: causing disease or harm
- pestilentialanother adjective from the same Latin family
- pestsame Latin root pestis: a plague, or a harmful creature
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Pestilencename
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The personification of pestilence, often depicted riding a white horse.
pestilencenoun/ˈpɛstələn(t)s/
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Any epidemic disease that is highly contagious, infectious, virulent and devastating.
- 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book XVII, Chapter iii, leaf 347r and hit was in the realme of Logrys and soo bifelle grete pestylence & grete harme to both Realmes "And it was in the realm of Logris; and so befell great pestilence and great harm to both realms."
- Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
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archaicAnything harmful to morals or public order.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。