Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To inhabit or overrun in numbers or quantities large enough to be harmful, threatening, or obnoxious: rats infesting the sewers; streets that were infested with drugs.
- v. To live as a parasite in or on: livestock that were infested with tapeworms.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Hostile; hurtful; mischievous; harassing; troublesome.
- To attack; molest; harass; haunt or prowl around mischievously or hurtfully; attack parasitically.
- Synonyms To annoy, harass, torment, plague, vex, molest, overrun.
- To become confirmed in evil; become habitually vicious.
Wiktionary
- v. to be mischievous; to be hurtful; to be harassing.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Mischievous; hurtful; harassing.
- v. To trouble greatly by numbers or by frequency of presence; to disturb; to annoy; to frequent and molest or harass
WordNet 3.0
- v. invade in great numbers
- v. live on or in a host, as of parasites
- v. occupy in large numbers or live on a host
Etymologies
- Middle English infesten, to distress, from Old French infester, from Latin īnfestāre, from īnfestus, hostile; see gwhedh- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Taking your memories as correct -- which they may not be; you could be recalling pieces of delirium -- you should be able to entertain the possibility that you and your friends had the bad luck to meet fools and brutes such as infest every outfit.”
“They feed mostly on very small insects and eggs, such as infest the bark of trees, but will eat almost anything offered them; even meat they will peck from”
“The food of the various Greenlets or Vireos is made up almost entirely of insects, of which a large per cent are caterpillars, such as infest shade trees and the larger shrubs.”
“Here were no cackling old women, or groaning Methodists, such as infest our English churches, and scare one's ears with hoarse coughs accompanied by the naso obligato.”
“Some of these false notes proceed simply from the immense growth of every sort of facilitation -- so that people are much more free than of old to come and go and do, to inquire and explore, to pervade and generally "infest"; with a consequent loss, for the fastidious individual, of his blest earlier sense, not infrequent, of having the occasion and the impression, as he used complacently to say, all to himself.”
“When it exists in connexion with an epidemic of fever, the development of malarial poison, or those debilitating influences which are the prolific sources of typhoids, and typhus, such as infest crowded camps, ill-ventilated Hospitals, and the confined Burden Cars in which soldiers are so frequently transported.”
“This consists, for the most part, of caterpillars, particularly such as infest apple-trees.”
The Western World Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North and South America
“At the game of auctions, docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning; and I would as soon think of buying jewellery at an auction in Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful needy wine-agents such as infest every man's door.”
“At the game of auctions, docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning; and I would as soon think of buying jewellery at an auction in Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful needy wine-agents such as infest every man’s door.”
“England does not have a significant number of fundamentalist nutters such as infest the GOP here. ”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘infest’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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words I have an irrational and burnin...
celesbian, crouch, perez hilton, slop, lotus boob, anal fissure, eat out, crotch, sewage, backwash, vomit, pus and 100 more...
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faux comparatives
temp, temper, tempest, hone, honer, honest, dive, diver, divest, earn, earner, earnest and 46 more...
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John Bull
words from Washington Irving's John Bull novel
cudgel, malice, ludicrous, apt, whimsical, infest, time out of mind, poacher, rook, lest, whim, on a whim and 7 more...
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verbs
shock, stun, stagger, astound, astonish, startle, jolt, abandon, relinquish, renounce, desert, yield and 74 more...
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words i don't like
just exactly that. some of them even make me *squik*
infest, seed, impregnate, electrocute, bismarck, pore, veal, creamy, portion
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