pestilential
/ˌpɛstɪˈlɛnʃi.əl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.66 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of or relating to pestilence or plague.
adj
Of or relating to pestilence or plague.
adj
Of or relating to pestilence or plague.
adj
Of or relating to pestilence or plague.
adj
Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of pestilence).
adj
Example Sentences
- "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:"
- "The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential."
- "1941, J. Chapman Miske, “The Thing in the Moonlight” in H. P. Lovecraft, The Tomb and Other Tales, New York: Ballantine, 1970, p. 187, Casting my eyes about, I beheld no living object; but was sensible of a very peculiar stirring far below me, amongst the whispering rushes of the pestilential swamp I had lately quitted."
- "A long sicknesse will weary friends at last; but a pestilentiall sicknes auerts them from the beginning."
- "[…] the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential disease."
Etymology
From Latin pestilentialis, from pestilentia.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: pestilentialis
Inflected Forms
more pestilential (comparative)
most pestilential (superlative)