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Oct 18, 2013
This week's theme
Words from diseases

This week's words
measly
anemic
sclerotic
cancerous
pestilent

This week's comments
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Next week's theme
Miscellaneous words
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

pestilent

PRONUNCIATION:
(PES-tl-uhnt)

MEANING:
adjective:
1. Deadly.
2. Infectious.
3. Harming peace, morals, etc.
4. Annoying.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin pestis (plague). Earliest documented use: 1613.

NOTES::
Here's a word that has a full range of meanings from merely annoying to deadly. But that's usually not a problem. In language, context is king.

USAGE:
"All the while, I stayed away from the pestilent Win8 and clunked along on my terminally-ill Pavilion laptop with Vista."
Darrell Norman; Cry for Help From Behind Enemy Lines; The Gadsden Times (Alabama); Sep 13, 2013.

"Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how I hate them!"
Albert Einstein; The World As I See It; 1949.

See more usage examples of pestilent in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers. -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

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