Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An annoying person or thing; a nuisance.
- n. An injurious plant or animal, especially one harmful to humans.
- n. A deadly epidemic disease; a pestilence.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Plague; pestilence; a deadly epidemic disease.
- n. Any very noxious, mischievous, or destructive thing, or a mischievous, destructive, very annoying, or troublesome person.
- n. Synonyms Infection.
- n. Scourge, nuisance.
Wiktionary
- n. originally A plague, pestilence, epidemic
- n. An annoying, harmful, often destructive creature.
- n. An annoying person.
- n. UK, slang Someone with poor social discipline who continually bothers disinterested women.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A fatal epidemic disease; a pestilence; specif., the plague.
- n. Anything which resembles a pest; one who, or that which, is troublesome, noxious, mischievous, or destructive; a nuisance.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a serious (sometimes fatal) infection of rodents caused by Yersinia pestis and accidentally transmitted to humans by the bite of a flea that has bitten an infected animal
- n. a persistently annoying person
- n. any epidemic disease with a high death rate
- n. any unwanted and destructive insect or other animal that attacks food or crops or livestock etc.
Etymologies
- From Middle French peste (=modern French), from Latin pestis (Wiktionary)
- French peste, pestilence, from Old French, from Latin pestis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The flea we might now regard as a pest, and the rat upon which the flea rode we would also classify as a pest, but back then, the word pest didn't apply to either.”
podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history
“Officially known as the brown marmorated stink bug, the pest is native to Asia and was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1998, according to entomologists at Penn State University.”
Consumer Reports: Stink bug: A home invader that lives up to its name
“I find it very amusing that the TV special about the next supercomet destroying the planet is sponsered by Orkin, the leader in pest control.”
“I called my pest control company and they came right out and took care of these crazy little guys. they were starting to take over my backyard behind my pool… luckily they were killed before they got to my pool pump- apparently that is costly. my pest control company totally got rid of them, their name is Proguard Pest control. love them!”
“Someone wants a computer but neither pillar nor pest is willing to leave of their own accord if the other one can stay ... so ...”
“The most attractive biological control technique is the introduction and permanent establishment of exotic species for long term pest suppression (known as classical biological control) because once in place no further input is required.”
1. Designing integrated pest management for sustainable and productive futures.
“When we called the pest control company, the manager was perplexed.”
The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - The Washington Post
“We called the pest control company," said Sharon Cao, spokeswoman for the restaurant.”
“The word pest arrived in English in the late 1400s in the saliva of a flea.”
podictionary - for word lovers - dictionary etymology, trivia & history
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pest’.
-
AGRI - sustainable agriculture
abiota, aborigines, absorptive capacity, acceptable daily ..., acclimation, acid precipitation, acquired by weeds..., active solar heating, acute, adaptation, additives, aerosol and 447 more...
-
Kangaroo Words 2
Kangaroo words with joey-antonyms, e.g., pest/pet
pest, friend, giant, cremate, covert, there, feast, wonderful, animosity, inattentive, electrocuted, rectitude and 54 more...
-
Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
zzyyxx's Words
plethora, drout, functional, rye, wring, doubt, cognative, weird, gnaw, surcease, rend, languish and 438 more...
-
Activated Phonemes
This list was generated by first taking a letter from the alphabet, or any of the initial cluster set of phonesthemes compiled by the ingenious Benjamin Shisler) and then sticking one of the suffix...
bing, ding, ging, jing, ling, ming, king, ping, ring, sing, ting, wing and 189 more...
-
Place Names Of Distinction
These are all names of real places. The focus is on towns, mountains, rivers etc. but I will consider streets. Streets are even wackier so if there's enough good'uns ... yep, another list :-)
malino, yoshkar-ola, cae onan, krakatoa, gulfoss, perusia, camooweal, manangatang, utopia, bastardo, condom, zumstein and 324 more...
-
ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
-
House, Sweet House
"House" words and phrases, literal and figurative. If another word comes before "house" in the phrase, it's listed on its own; if the phrase starts with "house," I've listed the part that comes aft...
publishing, brokerage, bridge, deck, smoke, road, vaudeville, whore, of representatives, of ill repute, of worship, movie and 174 more...
-
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Words from 2009 'Inglourious Basterds' film.
guise, testify, trepidation, moniker, bestow, buffling, cunning, scamper, animosity, rodent, repulsive, dignity and 74 more...
-
picaresque
An assortment of ruffians, villains and scamps.
(who are remarkably endearing for all they are bad seeds...)ruffian, villain, scamp, imp, fiend, bastard, cad, brute, desperado, miscreant, knave, devil and 62 more...
-
ramona
beezus, yard ape, howie kemp, willa jean kemp, whaley, oatmeal, nuisance, yamhill, mount hood, glenwood, quimby, tongue and 26 more...
-
slo: fem. nouns with sg. nom. ending ...
These nouns decline on the pattern stvar (see Peter Herrity, Slovene: A Comprehensive Grammar 2000, 56).
SG: nom/acc stvar, gen stvarí, dat/loc (proti/pri) stvári, instr s stvarjódlan, kost, pest, skrb, no�?, strast, mo�?, stvar, kri, brv, gos, snov and 55 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pest.
Prolagus
("Heirloom", by Sufjan Stephens) Mar 7, 2011
nuxiy Norwegian for plague Mar 17, 2009
oroboros PEsT Apr 25, 2008
bilby The eastern part of Hungary's capital, divided from Buda by the Danube river. Dec 31, 2007