pestilential

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Of or relating to pestilence or plague.

   • 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.
   • […] the Winter keen Pour’d out his Waste of Snows, and Summer shot His pestilential Heats:
2. 2

   Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of…

   Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of pestilence).

   • 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.
   • By proclaiming individuals or entire societies to be damned, by treating their convictions as pestilential heresies, church and state had deliberately loosed fanaticism and savagery on often helpless men.
3. 3

   Causing irritation or annoyance.

   • There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs […] They’d none of ’em be missed!
   • 1899, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 165, March 1899, Chapter 2, p. 480, […] a species of wandering trader—a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory from the natives.
   • “You are right that Authority must go. It is ridiculous—pestilential, not to be borne—that we should be ruled by an irresponsible dictator in all our essential economy!”

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