plague spot

Noun

plague spot (plural plague spots)

1. A spot on the skin that is characteristic of the plague or of a similar disease.
   • But no plague-spot appeared, and when Steb woke up in the afternoon and demanded something to eat, it was pretty evicent that he was merely suffering from a feverish cold.1881, Edward Newenham Hoare, The Brave Men of Eyam, Or, A Tale of the Great Plague Year, page 193
   • The first victim died 6 September after three days of illness when he developed swellings in the groin and neck and the fatal token, the plague spot.2011, Ole Benedictow, What Disease was Plague?, page 286

   Synonyms:

   God's token

2. A location where plague is active.
   • He notes that South Elmham deanery 'appears to have been a plague spot', but regrettably he supplies no reason for its unenviable condition.2005, J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles, page 98
   • However, with the growth of young animals, the gerbils visit neighboring burrows and the plague spot therefore expands.2016, Ruifu Yang, Andrey Anisimov, Yersinia pestis: Retrospective and Perspective, page 111
3. (figuratively) A location that is a plague or scourge; a place of corruption and degeneracy.
   • Suffice it that all that is most worthless in Europe may be seen gathered round the gaming-tables at Monte Carlo. The artist who did these drawings has been there. Well, I thank Heaven we have no such plague-spot in this fair England of ours.1899, The Butterfly - Volumes 1-2
   • He turned the worst plague spot in Oxford, with its plague pit where lay 'filth, rotten corpses, and intestines of corpses', the dump of the refuse of the town, 'where thieves and malefactors used to lie in wait for opportunities of thieving, homicide, and other intolerable evils', into a splendid...1937, Robert Theodore Gunther, Early science in Oxford, page 135