Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various highly infectious diseases of cattle, as anthrax.
  • noun Obsolete A pestilence or dire disease.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A disease affecting domestic animals, especially cattle; a cattle-plague or epizoötic disease of any kind; in a more limited sense, the same as foot-and-mouth disease (which see, under foot).
  • Affected with murrain.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having, or afflicted with, murrain.
  • noun (Far.) An infectious and fatal disease among cattle.
  • noun may you be afflicted with a pestilent disease.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun archaic Plague, infectious disease, pestilence.
  • noun veterinary medicine Any of several highly infectious diseases of cattle such as anthrax.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any disease of domestic animals that resembles a plague

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English moreine, from Old French morine, from Medieval Latin morina, from Latin morī, to die; see mer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman mourine, moreyn, Middle French morine, ultimately from a form of Latin mori ("to die").

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Examples

Comments

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  • "... a murrain seize the dolt ..."

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 20, 2007

  • "(Enter certain Romans, with spoils.)

    FIRST ROMAN: This will I carry to Rome.

    SECOND ROMAN: And I this.

    THIRD ROMAN: A murrain on't! I took this for silver."

    - William Shakespeare, 'The Tragedy of Coriolanus'.

    August 28, 2009

  • "Mrs. Gaddson was there, searching eagerly through her Bible for murrains and agues and emerods."

    Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 397

    May 29, 2010

  • "A disease affecting domestic animals, especially cattle; a cattle-plague or epizoötic disease of any kind; in a more limited sense, the same as foot-and-mouth disease (which see, under foot)."

    --Century Dictionary

    February 28, 2014

  • I looked up murrain because I am reading The Black Arrow by RLS, Someone yells out " A murrain!" So I assume it is an exclamation meaning " a pestilence" or "death to us " or something like that.

    April 10, 2016