plague

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A widespread affliction or calamity, especially one seen as divine retribution.
2. n. A sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak: a plague of locusts; a plague of accidents.
3. n. A cause of annoyance; a nuisance: "the plague of social jabbering” ( George Santayana).
4. n. A highly infectious, usually fatal, epidemic disease; a pestilence.
5. n. A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasturella ) pestis, is transmitted primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms.
6. v. To pester or annoy persistently or incessantly. See Synonyms at harass.
7. v. To afflict with or as if with a disease or calamity: "Runaway inflation further plagued the wage- or salary-earner” ( Edwin O. Reischauer).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A blow or calamity; severe trouble or vexation; also, one who or that which troubles or vexes, or ravages or destroys.
2. n. Any epidemic disease of high mortality. The disease known specifically as the plague, or bubo plague, entered Europe from the Levant in the sixth century, and lingered there in scattered localities over a thousand years. It has appeared in various regions (Egypt, Turkey, Persia, etc.) in the nineteenth century; the last occurrence in Europe was in the Volga district, in 1878-9. Typical cases, after a period of incubation of from two to seven days, be-gin suddenly with prostration, headache, dizziness, and sometimes vomiting and diarrhea; after a few hours or one or two days a chill develops, followed by high fever with noisy delirium, passing into coma; on the second to the fourth day buboes, most frequently inguinal, develop; in non-fatal cases they more frequently suppurate than resolve; there may also be carbuncles, boils, and petechiæ; convalescence begins from the sixth to the tenth day. The mortality is extreme, sometimes running as high as 95 per cent. The black-death of the fourteenth century may have been a modified form of this plague; so, too, the Pali plague. Also called the pest, the pestilence, glandular Plague or pestilence, inguinal plague, Levant or Levantine plague, Justinian plague.
3. n. As an expletive with the article the, used like the devil, the deuce, etc. Compare devil, 7.
4. To vex; harass; trouble; annoy; tease.
5. To infest with disease, calamity, or natural evil of any kind.
6. Synonyms Torment, Worry, etc. (see tease), gall, bore.
7. To afflict.

Wiktionary

1. n. The bubonic plague, the pestilent disease caused by the virulent bacterium Yersinia pestis.
2. n. pathology An epidemic or pandemic caused by any pestilence, but specifically by the above disease.
3. n. A widespread affliction, calamity or destructive influx, especially when seen as divine retribution.
4. n. A grave nuisance, whatever greatly irritates
5. v. transitive To harass, pester or annoy someone persistently or incessantly.
6. v. transitive To afflict with a disease or other calamity.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. That which smites, wounds, or troubles; a blow; a calamity; any afflictive evil or torment; a great trail or vexation.
2. n. (Med.) An acute malignant contagious fever, that often prevails in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, and has at times visited the large cities of Europe with frightful mortality; hence, any pestilence.
3. v. To infest or afflict with disease, calamity, or natural evil of any kind.
4. v. Fig.: To vex; to tease; to harass.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. cause to suffer a blight
2. n. any large scale calamity (especially when thought to be sent by God)
3. n. an annoyance
4. n. any epidemic disease with a high death rate
5. n. a swarm of insects that attack plants
6. v. annoy continually or chronically
7. 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