Definition of "pestilential"

Of or relating to pestilence or plague.

1. Producing, spreading, promoting or infected with pestilence; causing infection. (of people, animals, places or substances)  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • What do you fear? Why do you shun me thus. […] I am not Pestilential, nor Leaprous.

     1675, John Dryden, The Mistaken Husband, London: J. Magnes and R. Bentley, Act V, p. 63

   • […] the Winter keenPour’d out his Waste of Snows, and Summer shotHis pestilential Heats:check it out online

     1728, James Thomson, “Spring”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, page 20

   • The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential.

     1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 2, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano‎, volume 1, London, pages 78–79

   • Casting my eyes about, I beheld no living object; but was sensible of a very peculiar stirring far below me, amongst the whispering rushes of the pestilential swamp I had lately quitted.

     1941, J. Chapman Miske, “The Thing in the Moonlight” in H. P. Lovecraft, The Tomb and Other Tales, New York: Ballantine, 1970, p. 187

2. Spreading in the manner of pestilence. (of illnesses)  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • A long sicknesse will weary friends at last; but a pestilentiall sicknes auerts them from the beginning.

     1624, John Donne, “5. Meditation”, in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions‎, London: Thomas Jones, page 95

   • […] the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential disease.

     1783, Edward Gibbon, chapter 31, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire‎, volume 5, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, page 292

3. Caused by pestilence. (of symptoms)  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • The Scab, the Stench, and the Burning are terrible pestilential Symptoms,

     1752, George Berkeley, “An Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great-Britain”, in A Miscellany, Containing Several Tracts on Various Subjects‎, London: J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, page 40

4. During which pestilence spreads. (of a period of time)  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Now this pestilentiall Summer being well spent, upon the approach of the Winter, and decrease of the Sicknesse, the King […] drawes nearer to the City of London,

     1651, John Milton, The Life and Reigne of King Charls‎, London: W. Reybold, page 9

   • They must expect more Pestilential times,That lives in th’ Equinoctial of their Crimes;

     1665, John Quarles, The Citizens Flight with Their Re-call‎, London, page 4

(figurative) Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of pestilence).  quotations  examples

(figurative) Causing irritation or annoyance.  quotations  examples