1. Specifically, the disease known as the plague; hence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating.
Word of the Day: Catachrestical
Pestilence
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary
or plague, generally is used by the Hebrews for all epidemic or contagious diseases. The prophets usually connect together sword, pestilence, and famine, being three of the most grievous inflictions of the Almighty upon a guilty people. See DISEASES.
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary
[39 words — estimated reading time: 1 minute]
[39 words — estimated reading time: 1 minute]
Badness Roget’s Thesaurus §649
N. hurtfulness, virulence, evil doer, bane, plague spot, evil star, ill wind, hoodoo, jonah, snake in the grass, skeleton in the closet, amari aliquid, thorn in the side, malignity, malevolence, tender mercies, ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage, misusage, injury, knockout drops, badness, peccancy, abomination, painfulness, pestilence, guilt, depravity
V. be hurtful, cause evil, produce evil, inflict evil, work evil, do evil, damnify, endamage, hurt, harm, injure, pain, wrong, aggrieve, oppress, persecute, trample upon, tread upon, bear hard upon, put upon, overburden, weigh down, weigh heavy on, victimize, run down, molest, maltreat, abuse, ill-use, ill-treat, buffet, bruise, scratch, maul, smite, do violence, do harm, do a mischief, stab, pierce, outrage, do mischief, make mischief, bring into trouble, destroy
Adj. hurtful, harmful, scathful, baneful, baleful, injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome, prejudicial, disserviceable, disadvantageous, wide-wasting, unlucky, sinister, obnoxious, untoward, disastrous, oppressive, burdensome, onerous, malign, corrupting &c. (corrupt ), virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive, poisonous, deadly, destructive, inauspicious, bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful, horrid, horrible, dire, rank, peccant, foul, fulsome, rotten, rotten at the core, vile, base, villainous, mean, injured &c. deteriorated, unsatisfactory, exceptionable, indifferent, below par, illcontrived, ill-conditioned, wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable, pitiful, pitiable, woeful, evil, wrong, depraved, shocking, reprehensible, hateful, hateful as a toad, abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded, damned, damnable, infernal, diabolic, unadvisable, unprofitable, incompetent, irremediable
Adv. badly, wrong, ill, to one's cost, where the shoe pinches
Phr. bad is the best, the worst come to the worst, herba mala presto cresco, "wrongs unredressed or insults unavenged"
Disease Roget’s Thesaurus §655
N. disease, illness, sickness, ailing &c. "all the ills that flesh is heir to", morbidity, morbosity|, infirmity, ailment, indisposition, complaint, disorder, malady, distemper, distemperature, visitation, attack, seizure, stroke, fit, delicacy, loss of health, invalidation, cachexy, cachexia, atrophy, marasmus, indigestion, dyspepsia, decay, decline, consumption, palsy, paralysis, prostration, taint, pollution, infection, sepsis, septicity, infestation, epidemic, pandemic, endemic, epizootic, murrain, plague, pestilence, pox, sore, ulcer, abscess, fester, boil, pimple, wen, carbuncle, gathering, imposthume, peccant humor, issue, rot, canker, cold sore, fever sore, cancer, carcinoma, leukemia, neoplastic disease, malignancy, tumor, caries, mortification, corruption, gangrene, sphacelus, sphacelation, leprosy, eruption, rash, breaking out, fever, temperature, calenture, inflammation, ague, angina pectoris, appendicitis, asiatic cholera, spasmodic cholera, biliary calculus, kidney stone, black death, bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, blennorrhagia, blennorrhoea, blood poisoning, bloodstroke, bloody flux, brash, breakbone fever, dengue fever, malarial fever, q-fever, heart attack, cardiac arrest, cardiomyopathy, hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, bronchocele, canker rash, cardialgia, carditis, endocarditis, cholera, asphyxia, chlorosis, chorea, cynanche, dartre, enanthem, enanthema, erysipelas, exanthem, exanthema, gallstone, goiter, gonorrhea, green sickness, grip, grippe, influenza, flu, hay fever, heartburn, heaves, rupture, hernia, hemorrhoids, piles, herpes, itch, king's evil, lockjaw, measles, mumps, polio, necrosis, pertussis, phthisis, pneumonia, psora, pyaemia, pyrosis, quinsy, rachitis, ringworm, rubeola, st. vitus's dance, scabies, scarlatina, scarlet fever, scrofula, seasickness, struma, syntexis, tetanus, tetter, tonsillitis, tonsilitis, tracheocele, trachoma, trismus, varicella, varicosis, variola, water qualm, whooping cough, yellow fever, yellow jack, fatal disease, dangerous illness, galloping consumption, churchyard cough, general breaking up, break up of the system, idiocy, insanity, martyr to disease, cripple, "the halt the lame and the blind", valetudinary, valetudinarian, invalid, patient, case, sickroom, sick- chamber, pathology, etiology, nosology, anthrax, bighead, blackleg, blackquarter, cattle plague, glanders, mange, scrapie, milk sickness, heartworm, feline leukemia, roundworms, quarter-evil, quarter-ill, rinderpest, virus, bacterium, bacteria, dna virus, rna virus, rhinovirus, rhabdovirus, picornavirus, herpesvirus, cytomegalovirus, cmv, human immunodefficiency virus, hiv
V. be ill, ail, suffer, labor under, be affected with, complain of, have, droop, flag, languish, halt, sicken, peak, pine, gasp, keep one's bed, feign sickness, lay by, lay up, take a disease, catch a disease, catch an infection, break out
Adj. diseased, ailing, ill, ill of, taken ill, seized with, indisposed, unwell, sick, squeamish, poorly, seedy, affected with illness, afflicted with illness, laid up, confined, bedridden, invalided, in hospital, on the sick list, out of health, out of sorts, under the weather, valetudinary, unsound, unhealthy, sickly, morbid, morbose, healthless, infirm, chlorotic, unbraced, drooping, flagging, lame, crippled, halting, morbid, tainted, vitiated, peccant, contaminated, poisoned, tabid, mangy, leprous, cankered, rotten, rotten to the core, rotten at the core, withered, palsied, paralytic, dyspeptic, luetic, pneumonic, pulmonic, phthisic, rachitic, syntectic, syntectical, tabetic, varicose, touched in the wind, broken-winded, spavined, gasping, hors de combat, weakly, weakened, decrepit, decayed, incurable, in declining health, cranky, in a bad way, in danger, prostrate, moribund, morbific, epidemic, endemic, zymotic
King James Bible KJV Bible
Berean Standard Bible BSB Bible
50 KJV and 4 BSB verses contain “Pestilence” — showing the first 20. Show all 52 verses (searchable)
And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.
“The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” they answered. “Please let us go on a three-day journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD our God, or He may strike us with plagues or with the sword.”
And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.
They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that there be three days’ pestilence in thy land? now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me.
If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be;
Either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me.
So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
So the LORD sent a plague upon Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell dead.
If there be dearth in the land, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting, or mildew, locusts, or caterpillers; if their enemies besiege them in the cities of their land; whatsoever sore or whatsoever sickness there be:
If, when evil cometh upon us, as the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this house, and in thy presence, (for thy name is in this house,) and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help.
And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.
‘After that,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah, his officers, and the people in this city who survive the plague and sword and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives. He will put them to the sword; he will not spare them or show pity or compassion.’
