pestiferous

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“
Every day his insatiable maw must be fed with the body of a young maiden, while so pestiferous is the breath which exhales from his throat that it causes a plague of a character so violent that whole districts have been depopulated by it.

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Definitions (11)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. adjective Producing or breeding infectious disease.
  2. adjective Infected with or contaminated by an epidemic disease.
  3. adjective Morally evil or deadly; pernicious.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • Even so, he'd have to concede that predators and parasites are sometimes pestiferous, and that their branches of the real Tree of Life rarely produce true intelligence. —  Asimov'sSF,August2006
  • "I see a part of myself in them, in every one of them, because there but by the grace of God," she paused, waving off the end of her sentence like a pestiferous insect. —  battlecreekenquirer.com -
  • Trying to scurry away from the light like the pestiferous roaches they are. katandmoon —  Democratic Underground Latest Breaking News
  • Trying to scurry away from the light like the pestiferous roaches they are. 3. —  Democratic Underground Latest Breaking News
  • This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it. —  The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Latin pestiferus, variant of pestifer : pestis, pestilence; see pest + -fer, -fer.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = Old French pestifereux (also pestifere), French pestifère = Spanish pestífero = Portuguese Italian pestifero, from Latin pestifer, rarely pestiferus, that brings plague or destruction, from pestis, plague (see pest), + ferre = English bear.
 

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/pɛsˈtɪfərəs/
by American Heritage

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