Synonyms:
pestilence, canker
Meaning: a pernicious and malign influence that is hard to get rid of; "racism is a pestilence at the heart of the nation"; "according to him, I was the canker in their midst"
Synonyms:
plague, pestilence, pest
Meaning: any epidemic disease with a high death rate
Synonyms:
plague, pestilence, pest, pestis
Meaning: 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
Usage examples
Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine.
I do not think a sadder sight to see Was in Aegina the whole people sick, (When was the air so full of pestilence,
I did not, for some weeks, strike or otherwise violently ill-use it, but gradually--very gradually--I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence as from the breath of a pestilence.
His mother was a woman of much too fine a spirit to grudge anything for the service of her country; but she could not help being exceptionally anxious about the dangers of disease for a sickly boy in a far-off land of pestilence and fever.