How to Use pestilence in a Sentence

pestilence

noun
  • After years of war and pestilence, few people remained in the city.
  • The end may be near for the pestilence that has haunted the world this year.
    — Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic, 14 Nov. 2020
  • There’s frost and heat, drought and rain, pestilence and fire raining down the sky.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 20 May 2022
  • This ancient virus has been a pestilence on mankind for centuries.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 15 May 2013
  • Luke called the vultures back and reshot the scene with the jetsam of pestilence.
    — Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
  • Famines, pestilence, crusades, and war.
    — Greg Grandin september 23, Literary Hub, 23 Sep. 2025
  • True-crime mania has spread like a pestilence, but this is the best the genre has to offer.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 2 May 2022
  • So when a pest or pestilence invades, at least some part of the wheat supply may survive.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 17 Nov. 2020
  • They’re seen as signs of urban decay and carriers of pestilence.
    — Charlie Hamilton James, National Geographic, 17 June 2019
  • Horses, donkeys, camels, and herds and flocks of other livestock die from the pestilence.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Mar. 2026
  • In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death.
    — Los Angeles Times, 2 Nov. 2024
  • Americans were ready to turn the page on war and pestilence and let loose in the roaring ’20s.
    — Patrick T. Brown, CNN, 9 Feb. 2023
  • Plunder, plague, and pestilence come quickly to mind, starvation and death not far behind.
    — Sigrid MacRae, Harper's Magazine, 16 Mar. 2021
  • The swan-boys fly away while their sister, Eliza, is dispatched to a remote village away from the pestilence.
    — WSJ, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Israel has no choice but to go to this area to get rid of the pestilence and hopefully rescue the innocent hostages.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 25 May 2024
  • When wages had grown in the past after periods of pestilence, population surged and wages fell again.
    — Phil Gramm and Mike Solon, WSJ, 23 Dec. 2020
  • The threat of pestilence has been prevalent throughout urban history.
    — Joel Kotkin, Fortune, 1 Apr. 2020
  • This confirmed that the pestilence mentioned on the tombstones was indeed the plague, which is spread from rodents to humans via fleas.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 15 June 2022
  • Global trade and climate change are poised to make the spread and severity of arboreal plagues and pestilence worse.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 30 Aug. 2022
  • As an example, the celestial dog was thought to aid the sun in causing the intense heat, drought and pestilence of summer.
    — Joe Rao, Space.com, 23 Jan. 2026
  • Like a perennial pestilence, a familiar set of naysayers emerge, looking to get their names in the headlines.
    — Al Saracevic, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 May 2018
  • With fire and broadsword came pestilence, in the form of a sickness called Morrisania fever, which carried off many Refugees.
    — Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, 15 July 2024
  • This is not to say that the pestilence lacks the Coens’ trademark comic ghastliness and smarty-pants zingers.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Oct. 2017
  • Few things are more pressing than eradicating the social pestilence symbolized by the place.
    — Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2020
  • The frightful pestilence now surrounds San Diego on all sides, and its appearance here seems to be but a question of time.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Jan. 2022
  • The morticians of the Middle Ages pick up bodies to place on a wheelbarrow in the midst of a pestilence.
    — David Plazas, The Tennessean, 17 Apr. 2024
  • Sekhmet, in Egyptian mythology, was the goddess of war, of the hot desert sun, of chaos and pestilence and its opposite, healing.
    — Rob Haskell, Vogue, 15 Mar. 2022
  • Oedipus’ subjects come to the palace, imploring him to save the city, describing the scene of pestilence and panic, the screaming and the corpses in the street.
    — Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2020
  • Lead was crucial in the production of silver, which eventually spurred an economic resurgence as the sky cleared and the pestilence waned.
    — Sam Blum, Popular Mechanics, 20 Nov. 2018
  • But only the most primitive imagined that the gods of the sun and goddesses of the harvest, or spirits of pestilence and storm, had any serious roles to play.
    — Ben Ehrenreich, The New Republic, 10 May 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pestilence.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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