pest
an annoying or troublesome person, animal, or thing; nuisance.
an insect or other small animal that harms or destroys garden plants, trees, etc.
a deadly epidemic disease, especially a plague; pestilence.
Origin of pest
1Other words for pest
Other words from pest
- de-pest, verb (used with object)
Other definitions for Pest (2 of 2)
See under Budapest.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use pest in a sentence
These agricultural pests migrate in mid-summer to the Rocky Mountains from Kansas and Nebraska to beat the heat.
Borlaug and his associates set out to develop strains of wheat that could resist diseases and pests, and thus improve yields.
And cotton crops would often fail when pests like the boll weevil tore through the fields.
As he says, most men are not predatory sex pests, trying to force themselves on women, get a hand up her skirt, or cop a feel.
Does California’s College Rape Bill Go Too Far In Regulating Sex? | Emma Woolf | June 23, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThe little pests will go on to a supposedly prestigious institution (the Senate) choked in ivy (or cloture debate).
The Federal Government Has Violated My Right to Chainsaw | P. J. O’Rourke | April 27, 2014 | THE DAILY BEAST
He waged war all night with these pests, which ran over his bed and made a hideous noise.
The Life & Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky | Modeste TchaikovskyThe first thing I thought of was the bugs, blights, pests, weeds and such things that I have been fighting with all summer.
The Red Cow and Her Friends | Peter McArthurGet a doctor if the pests are sick, because we don't want investigations.
Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman | Emma Speed SampsonThe harm is done by these pests sucking the juices from the leaf.
Amateur Gardencraft | Eben E. RexfordSwallows in the Southern states kill the cotton-boll weevil, one of our worst insect pests.
A Civic Biology | George William Hunter
British Dictionary definitions for pest
/ (pɛst) /
a person or thing that annoys, esp by imposing itself when it is not wanted; nuisance
any organism that damages crops, injures or irritates livestock or man, or reduces the fertility of land
(as modifier): pest control
rare an epidemic disease or pestilence
Origin of pest
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Browse