How to Use pestilence in a Sentence

pestilence

noun
Definition of pestilencenext
Synonyms for pestilencenext
  • After years of war and pestilence, few people remained in the city.
  • The end may be near for the pestilence that has haunted the world this year.
    — Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic, 14 Nov. 2020
  • There’s frost and heat, drought and rain, pestilence and fire raining down the sky.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 20 May 2022
  • This week’s first cause for alarm is pestilence, aka bugs.
    — Bonnie Blodgett, Twin Cities, 17 June 2017
  • True-crime mania has spread like a pestilence, but this is the best the genre has to offer.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 2 May 2022
  • Americans were ready to turn the page on war and pestilence and let loose in the roaring ’20s.
    — Patrick T. Brown, CNN, 9 Feb. 2023
  • The Greek physician Hippocrates warned in the fifth century B.C. that bad air was the cause of pestilence.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 22 Feb. 2021
  • This ancient virus has been a pestilence on mankind for centuries.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 15 May 2013
  • So when a pest or pestilence invades, at least some part of the wheat supply may survive.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 17 Nov. 2020
  • The swan-boys fly away while their sister, Eliza, is dispatched to a remote village away from the pestilence.
    — WSJ, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Oedipus’ subjects come to the palace, imploring him to save the city, describing the scene of pestilence and panic, the screaming and the corpses in the street.
    — Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2020
  • Women were warned about this pestilence in ladies’ journals.
    — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, 30 Mar. 2017
  • Cell phones raise, hoping to capture a moment of pestilence.
    — Alex Prewitt, SI.com, 19 Apr. 2018
  • The frightful pestilence now surrounds San Diego on all sides, and its appearance here seems to be but a question of time.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Jan. 2022
  • This confirmed that the pestilence mentioned on the tombstones was indeed the plague, which is spread from rodents to humans via fleas.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 15 June 2022
  • But there were other forces at work: war, fire, pestilence, and the cartographer’s pen.
    — Weston Williams, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 July 2017
  • Sekhmet, in Egyptian mythology, was the goddess of war, of the hot desert sun, of chaos and pestilence and its opposite, healing.
    — Rob Haskell, Vogue, 15 Mar. 2022
  • This is not to say that the pestilence lacks the Coens’ trademark comic ghastliness and smarty-pants zingers.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Oct. 2017
  • Perfect weather for all manner of pestilence and blight.
    — Bonnie Blodgett, Twin Cities, 17 June 2017
  • Gretel & Hansel stars Lillis and Sammy Leakey as siblings who leave home during a time of pestilence and famine.
    — Clark Collis, EW.com, 24 Jan. 2020
  • They’re seen as signs of urban decay and carriers of pestilence.
    — Charlie Hamilton James, National Geographic, 17 June 2019
  • Global trade and climate change are poised to make the spread and severity of arboreal plagues and pestilence worse.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 30 Aug. 2022
  • When wages had grown in the past after periods of pestilence, population surged and wages fell again.
    — Phil Gramm and Mike Solon, WSJ, 23 Dec. 2020
  • Like a perennial pestilence, a familiar set of naysayers emerge, looking to get their names in the headlines.
    — Al Saracevic, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 May 2018
  • But only the most primitive imagined that the gods of the sun and goddesses of the harvest, or spirits of pestilence and storm, had any serious roles to play.
    — Ben Ehrenreich, The New Republic, 10 May 2023
  • Plunder, plague, and pestilence come quickly to mind, starvation and death not far behind.
    — Sigrid MacRae, Harper's Magazine, 16 Mar. 2021
  • The series of epidemics, including the one in 1545, are simply referred to as cocoliztli, the generic Aztec word for pestilence.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 16 Jan. 2018
  • The hot seat will not go cold, in other words, just because of some pestilence hoax perpetrated by the left-wing, football-hating media and the one-world order.
    — Joseph Goodman | Jgoodman@al.com, al, 23 Sep. 2020
  • Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, who survived the era of pestilence, wrote in his book of tales, the Decameron.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 6 Mar. 2020
  • Verdict: the audio gods will not rain pestilence and red ink down upon Master & Dynamic.
    — Rene Chun, WIRED, 12 July 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pestilence.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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