pestilential

[pes-tl-en-shuhl]

adjective

1. producing or tending to produce pestilence.

2. pertaining to or of the nature of pestilence, especially bubonic plague.

3. pernicious; harmful.

4. annoyingly troublesome.

pestilential

/ ˌpɛstɪˈlɛnʃəl /

adjective

1. dangerous or troublesome; harmful or annoying

2. of, causing, or resembling pestilence

Other Word Forms

• pestilentially adverb
• pestilentialness noun
• antipestilential adjective
• nonpestilential adjective
• unpestilential adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of pestilential¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English word from Medieval Latin word pestilentiālis. See pestilent, -ial

Example Sentences

Mystified, he wanders the dank halls of their rented palazzo and the fetid alleyways of the “pestilential city” where canal waters slither past like “a fat, grey-green worm.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

A garden pond can be either a pestilential mess or the beating heart of a landscape, depending on how well it is designed, engineered and maintained.

Read more on Washington Post

"Have you been in this pestilential city long?"

Read more on Literature

At one point, a big black fly disconcertingly lit on Mr. Pence’s white shock of hair, a pestilential symbol that proved the writers of our reality can be pretty heavy-handed with the metaphors.

Read more on New York Times

The Middle Ages and Renaissance produced a body of “pestilential music”:motets, madrigals and other compositions responding to the horrific plagues of those times.

Read more on Los Angeles Times