pestilentious

Adjective

pestilential (comparative more pestilential, superlative most pestilential)

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

   Synonyms:

   pestiferous

2. Spreading in the manner of pestilence. (of illnesses)
   • 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
3. Caused by pestilence. (of symptoms)
   • pestilential fever; pestilential sweating
4. During which pestilence spreads. (of a period of time)
   • 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
5. (figuratively) Having a harmful moral effect (especially one that is believed to spread in the manner of pestilence).
   • But as the Poisons of the deadliest kind
     Are to their own unhappy Coasts confin’d,
     […]
     So Presby’try and Pestilential Zeal
     Can only flourish in a Common-weal.1687, John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, 2nd edition, London: Jacob Tonson, Part 1, p. 14

   Synonyms:

   pernicious

6. (figuratively) Causing irritation or annoyance.
   • There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs […] They’d none of ’em be missed!1885, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert; Arthur Sullivan, composer, […] The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu, London: Chappel & Co., […], →OCLC, Act I, page 9

   Synonyms:

   annoying, irritating, pestiferous, pestilent, troublesome, vexatious