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black death - 8 dictionary results

Black Death

–noun
a form of bubonic plague that spread over Europe in the 14th century and killed an estimated quarter of the population.

Origin:
1815–25
Black Death  
n.  An outbreak of bubonic plague that was pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia in the 14th century.

[From the dark splotches it causes on its victims.]

Black death

Black" death`\ A pestilence which ravaged Europe and Asia in the fourteenth century.

Black Death

A disease that killed nearly half the people of western Europe in the fourteenth century. It was a form of the bubonic plague.


Black Death 
"bubonic/pneumonic plague epidemic of 1347-51 in Europe," a modern name, introduced in Eng. 1823 by Elizabeth Penrose's history of England. The contemporary name for it in most languages was something like "the great dying." The term "Black Death" first turns up in 16c. Swed. and Dan. chronicles, but in ref. to a visitation of plague in Iceland in 1402-3 that carried off much of the population there. The exact sense of "black" is not clear. The term was picked up in Ger. 18c., applied to the earlier outbreak, and taken from there into Eng.

Main Entry: black death
Function: noun
often cap B&D 1 : PLAGUE 2
2 : a severe epidemic of plague and especially bubonic plague that occurred in Asia and Europe in the 14th century

Black Death n.
A form of bubonic plague, caused by Yersinia pestis, that was pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia in the 14th century.

Black Death  
A widespread epidemic of bubonic plague that occurred in several outbreaks between 1347 and 1400. It originated in Asia and then swept through Europe, where it killed about a third of the population. See more at bubonic plague.
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