plague

American  

[pleyg] / pleɪg /

noun

• plagues
  plural

1. an epidemic disease that causes high mortality; pestilence.

2. an infectious, epidemic disease caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, characterized by fever, chills, and prostration, transmitted to humans from rats by means of the bites of fleas.

3. any widespread affliction, calamity, or evil, especially one regarded as a direct punishment by God.

   a plague of war and desolation.

4. any cause of trouble, annoyance, or vexation.

   Uninvited guests are a plague.

   Synonyms:

   torment, bother, nuisance

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verb (used with object)

• plagues,
  present (3rd person singular)
• plagued,
  past participle,  past
• plaguing
  present participle

1. to trouble, annoy, or torment in any manner.

   The question of his future plagues him with doubt.

2. to annoy, bother, or pester.

   Ants plagued the picnickers.

   Synonyms:

   disturb, irritate, badger, worry, fret, hector, harry, vex, harass

3. to smite with a plague, pestilence, death, etc.; scourge.

   those whom the gods had plagued.

4. to infect with a plague; cause an epidemic in or among.

   diseases that still plague the natives of Ethiopia.

5. to afflict with any evil.

   He was plagued by allergies all his life.

plague British  

/ pleɪɡ /

noun

1. any widespread and usually highly contagious disease with a high fatality rate

2. an infectious disease of rodents, esp rats, transmitted to man by the bite of the rat flea ( Xenopsylla cheopis )

3. See bubonic plague

4. something that afflicts or harasses

5. informal an annoyance or nuisance

6. a pestilence, affliction, or calamity on a large scale, esp when regarded as sent by God

7. archaic used to express annoyance, disgust, etc

   a plague on you

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verb

1. to afflict or harass

2. to bring down a plague upon

3. informal to annoy

plague Scientific  

/ plāg /

1. Any of various highly infectious, usually fatal epidemic diseases.

2. An often fatal disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted to humans usually by fleas that have bitten infected rats or other rodents.

3. ◆ Bubonic plague, the most common type, is characterized by the tender, swollen lymph nodes called buboes, fever, clotting abnormalities of the blood, and tissue necrosis. An epidemic of bubonic plague in fourteenth-century Europe and Asia was known as the Black Death.

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plague Cultural  

1. A highly contagious disease, such as bubonic plague, that spreads quickly throughout a population and causes widespread sickness and death.

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plague Idioms  

1. see avoid like the plague.

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Synonym Usage

See bother.

Discover More

The term is also used to refer to widespread outbreaks of many kinds, such as a “plague of locusts.”

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• antiplague
  noun
• plaguer
  noun
• unplagued
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• plagues
  plural

Participles

• plaguing
  present
• plagued
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• plague
  simple
• plagues
  simple
• have plagued
  perfect
• has plagued
  perfect
• am plaguing
  progressive
• are plaguing
  progressive
• is plaguing
  progressive
• have been plaguing
  perfect progressive
• has been plaguing
  perfect progressive

Past

• plagued
  simple
• had plagued
  perfect
• was plaguing
  progressive
• were plaguing
  progressive
• had been plaguing
  perfect progressive

Future

• will plague
  simple
• will have plagued
  perfect
• will be plaguing
  progressive
• will have been plaguing
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of plague

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English plage, from Latin plāga “stripe, wound,” Late Latin: “pestilence”

Explanation

When the homeowner described her ant problem as a plague, the exterminator thought she was being a bit melodramatic. After all, a few bugs aren't exactly a huge calamity. Centuries ago, if you had admitted to a friend that you had the plague, that friend would have hightailed it in the other direction. In the Middle Ages, the plague was a horribly contagious illness that spread like wildfire through Europe, killing millions of people. Thanks to the introduction of better hygiene and antibiotics, plague doesn't describe a killer disease as often these days. Instead, it commonly overstates an annoyance, like an apartment dweller claiming his building is plagued by cockroaches.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

plague plagues plagued plaguing

To tackle the severe droughts and water shortages that plague the country, Kazakhstan has resorted to cloud seeding, a weather modification method previously unseen in Central Asia.

From Barron's ● Aug. 12, 2026

What the Emmy-winning series has undeniably done is bring soccer into millions of unsuspecting households that had previously avoided the sport like a plague.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026

But only about 57% of its 100-plus recommendations, external have reportedly been implemented - and paper leaks continue to plague exams.

From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026

Sisilla’s mission is to investigate a metallic world of exiled plague victims gone incommunicado.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

Not long after he graduated, the university was closed temporarily and its scholars dispersed to avoid the plague.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

This is not helped by the insecurity that plagues eastern DR Congo.

From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026

We’ve had plagues and climate change before, to some degree, but until the Manhattan Project, humans weren’t really in control of that kind of existential, destructive power.

From Salon ● Jun. 15, 2026

Lurid origin stories for plagues are nothing new under the sun.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

Counterintuitively, Zander and Petersson believe that prioritizing professional relationships has allowed the band to avoid the destructive infighting that often plagues bands made up of best friends.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2026

The archive reflects the human need to document every deed and directive, to place a veil of administrative tidiness over the disorder of famines and plagues and natural disasters and crimes and wars.

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann

The festival brought eight days of music, thousands of people and tens of millions of pounds of investment to a city once plagued by fear and violence.

From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026

South Africa is plagued by violence, but extensive research has found that white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups.

From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026

Though she won’t go into details about those early interactions, she remembers the isolation that plagued her.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

Agricultural economies of the past were plagued by malnutrition; today the roughly 1% of U.S. workers in agriculture are productive enough to make us obese.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026

His relationships were stormy and plagued with bad luck.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

Nigeria's president has approved the country's largest military expansion in recent times - an attempt to tackle the slew of security challenges plaguing the nation.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

The weakness is partly being driven by the continued downturn plaguing Asian tech stocks.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 26, 2026

He has devoted a surprising amount of time and energy into relaying the minute engineering problems plaguing this shallow pool on the National Mall.

From Slate ● Jun. 4, 2026

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has, historically, been very public about his concerns about what is plaguing the nation’s well-being.

From Salon ● May 15, 2026

Even though the water has not been proven to contain any special properties, it was used in the elixir that seems to have helped many people overcome the sickness still plaguing so many outside Manifest.

From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool

Related Words

• contagion
• curse
• epidemic
• infection
• infestation
• influenza
• invasion
• outbreak
• pandemic
• scourge