Sunday Word: Pestiferous
pestiferous [pe-stif-er-uhs]
adjective:
1 spreading or bearing disease, especially deadly epidemic disease; pestilential
2 pernicious; evil
Examples:
Although its distinctly lobed leaves don't achieve great size, this vine can be as pestiferous as any plant in cultivation, with stems that scuttle under mulch, up trees and onto neighboring properties. (Charles Reynolds, Indoor plants can get out of hand outside, Herald Tribune, April 2014)
The people of New Philadelphia and Canal Dover have been rejoicing over her conviction and the prospect of abatement of this pestiferous sink of iniquity, but the laws' delays are proverbial and the realization of their hopes is not imminent. (Jon Baker, Hooked on History: Dorothy Bunch had notorious career as Tuscarawas County madam, TimesReporter, October 2020)
Structured as entries in Emily’s field journal, the novel lays out her aims, her curmudgeonly nature and her pestiferous relationship with one Wendell Bambleby - a charismatic fellow researcher and sometime rival who Emily suspects is a fairy himself. (Amal El-Mohtar, Your Guides to the World of Fairies and to the Multiverse, The New York Times, April 2023)
It is a region of stagnant waters, pestiferous exhalations, decrepit men, famished animals. (Arthur Mangin, The Desert World)
The air, too, was close and pestiferous, as if all the foul vapours had been forced up from the inward recesses of the hold. (W H G Kingston, Hurricane Hurry)
Well, he was done, he solaced himself. He had hitched his wagon to a star and been landed in a pestiferous marsh. (Jack London, Martin Eden)
Origin:
mid-15c, pestiferus, 'bringing plague, plague-bearing, pestilential,' also in a weakened or figurative sense, 'mischievous, malignant, pernicious, hurtful to morals or society,' form of Latin pestiferus 'that brings plague or destruction,' variant of pestifer 'bringing plague, destructive, noxious,' from pestis 'plague' + ferre 'carry,' from PIE root bher- 'to carry,' also 'to bear children.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)