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Pestiferous   Listen
adjective
Pestiferous  adj.  
1.
Pest-bearing; pestilential; noxious to health; malignant; infectious; contagious; as, pestiferous bodies. "Poor, pestiferous creatures begging alms." "Unwholesome and pestiferous occupations."
2.
Noxious to peace, to morals, or to society; vicious; hurtful; destructive; as, a pestiferous demagogue. "Pestiferous reports of men very nobly held."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pestiferous" Quotes from Famous Books



... the purest of their brethren— with the plague of sin. A deadly sickness, indeed! Feeling its symptoms within the breast, men concealed it with fear and shame, and were only the more cruel to those unfortunates whose pestiferous sores were flagrant to the common eye. Nothing save a rich garment could ever hide the plague-spot. In the course of the world's lifetime, every remedy was tried for its cure and extirpation, except the single one, the flower that grew in Heaven and was sovereign ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... passed "authorizing transportation as a commutation punishment for clergyable felonies." These convicts were transported by private shippers, and then sold into the colony; and thus it became a gainful enterprise. From 1700 until 1760 this nefarious and pestiferous traffic greatly increased. At length it became, as already indicated, the subject of a special impost tax. Three or four hundred convicts were imported into the colony annually, and the people began to complain.[424] In "The Maryland Gazette" of the 30th of July, 1767, a writer attempted ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... strong Holds have all the open Places cover'd with Canvass stretch'd from Side to Side; upon which is strew'd an Herb so venemous, that, in six Hours after it has been expos'd to the Sun, it emits so pestiferous a Stench, that no Fowl can approach it by many Yards, but what will fall dead; and this Stench, by the Effluvia mounting, is no way offensive to those below. This is the Reason their Sieges are rather Blockades, and no fortify'd ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... which separates the two worlds is greater even than that which lies between Belgravia and Bethnal Green or St. Giles's. The people who live in the lower town are principally employed on the wharfs, and in the lumber trade. But my readers will, not thank me for detaining them in a pestiferous atmosphere, among such unpleasing scenes; we will therefore ascend into the High-street of the city, resplendent with gorgeous mercers' stores, and articles of luxury of every description. This street and several ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... richness and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... through the malicious suggestion of our gostly enemy, partly by the yvell and perverse inclination and sedicious disposition of sundry persons, divers heresies and erronio[us] [o]pinions have ben late sowen and spredde amonge his subjectes of this his said realme, by blasphemous and pestiferous englishe bokes, printed in other regions and sent into this realme, to the entent as well to perverte and withdrawe the people from the catholike and true fayth of Christe, as also to stirre and incense them to sedition and disobedience agaynst their princes, soveraignes, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... Species" had been published the year before, and tongues were wagging. Darwin was not present; but Huxley, who was known to be a personal friend of Darwin, was in his seat. The intent of the chairman was to keep Darwin and his pestiferous book out of all the discussions: Darwin was a good man to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... more sympathy with them, and will be led to protect them all the more carefully, if we know something about the "deep waters of affliction" through which they are sometimes compelled to pass. Our native American birds, at least some of them, suffer a good deal at the hands, so to speak, of the pestiferous English sparrows, which were introduced into this ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... gumberries, breaking off the boughs of the oaks in order to obtain the acorns; these bears also kill hogs, and even cows. Occasionally a solitary wolf is seen prowling over the morass, and wild cats also clamber amid its woods. Even in summer, the air, instead of being hot and pestiferous, is especially cool, the evaporation continually going on in the wet spongy soil generating an atmosphere resembling that of a region considerably elevated above the level of the ocean. Canals have been cut through this swamp. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... that corresponds with my nature and constitution. Patriotism is the strongest passion; and I glory in being a Yankee.—A Yankee is any man born in New-England—and New-England contains the three northern States, and a certain little, pestiferous, pseudo Island. My countrymen generally have the credit of being a good-natured, psalm-singing, religious kind of men, very honest, but plaguy hard in their dealings—insomuch that a Carolinian or a Georgian frequently swear that the very Satan ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... malaria &c. (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific[obs3], morbiferous[obs3]; mephitic, septic, azotic[obs3], deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous[obs3], teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic[obs3]; epizootic. innutritious[obs3], indigestible, ungenial; uncongenial &c. (disagreeing) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... a box in which some mounted moths had been sent me by a friend in Louisiana, and when I went to examine my cocoons toward spring, to my horror I found the contents of the box chopped to pieces and totally destroyed. Pestiferous little 'clothes' moths must have infested the box, for there were none elsewhere in the Cabin. For a while this appeared to be too bad luck; but when luck turns squarely against you, that is the time to test the ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... have murthered her! Perfumes some creature kill: she has so long In that darke Dungeon suck't pestiferous breath, The sweete has stifled her. Take hence the body, Since me it hated it shall feele my hate: Cast her into the fire; I have lost her, And for her sake all Christians shall be lost That subjects are to me: massacre all, But thou, Eugenius, art the last shall fall ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... of lawful birth was what straightened him up and made a man of him for a moment, removing his doubts upon that head and convincing him of his royal right; and if any could have hanged his hindering and pestiferous council and set him free, he would have answered Joan's prayer and set her in the field. But no, those creatures were only checked, not checkmated; they could invent ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... a whirl of flags, a zigzag of eyes like innumerable little tongues licking at the air. The tension of her thought relaxed. She remembered that when he walked in streets he was always making pictures. She thought of his words.... "It's a part of me that love hasn't changed, except to increase. A pestiferous sanity keeps demanding of me that I translate incoherent things into words. The city keeps handing itself to me like a blank piece of paper to write ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... able to determine any thing on this question, I shall content myself with collecting, into one view, the several properties of this pestiferous brood, with which we are threatened, as hints to more sagacious and fortunate readers, who, when they shall find any red animal, that ranges uncontrouled over the country, and devours the labours of the trader and the husbandman; that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... left a pocket-book on the mountain where she had been sketching. She offered me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples; so I went in the evening. I found it sure enough, and was about to return, when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The air was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature could breathe it and live. I was so astounded that I stood as still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes and stood before me face to face. Sancta ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... absorbed.[1] 'All Rome,' says Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... tells me that he is a French music-master whom she hired to marry her in order that she might escape from a pestiferous person named Count Ladislas Vassilan," replied Curtis with cool directness. "She brought the obliging individual with her from Paris for the purpose, and paid him a thousand dollars as a sort of retaining fee. From what little I have seen of her, she impresses me as a ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... small talk was practically non-existent. To get the best out of Hank, as has been said, you had to let him take his coat off and put his feet up on the back of a second chair and reconcile yourself to the pestiferous brand of tobacco ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... grieved him. Some other affair of his was yet unsettled—an affair which tortured him and required his attention. In his imagination rose the gloomy scenes of the hundreds and thousands of human beings pent up in the pestiferous air. The laughter of the prisoners resounded in his ears. He saw again among the dead bodies the beautiful, angry, waxen face of the dead Kryltzoff; and the question whether he was mad, or all those who commit those evils and think themselves wise ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... the disgraceful state you are in she would not so much as read your letter. I have read it, and by way of reward I give you two alternatives which you must decide on immediately. I am in a hurry. You will either go to the hospital—for we can't have pestiferous fellows like you here—or start for Lyons in an hour. You must not stop on the way, for I have only given you sixty hours, which is ample to do forty posts in. As soon as you get to Lyons present this to M. Bono, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... especially one exceedingly large, in which was a great and rich city; which on due consideration must be the Island of Meroe. They told me also that on this great island, and all through the river, there were great numbers of fierce and pestiferous animals, which doubtless must be crocodiles. Enquiring if the river in a certain place fell from such a height, that with the noise of the fall those who inhabited the neighbouring towns were born deaf; they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... Erech, which recent American excavations have proved to be the site of Udab (also called Adab and Usab) and the neighbouring F[a]ra, the site of the ancient Kisurra. The dense population was due to the elaborate irrigation of the Babylonian plain which had originally reclaimed it from a pestiferous and uninhabitable swamp and had made it the most fertile country in the world. The science of irrigation and engineering seems to have been first created in Babylonia, which was covered by a network of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... smoke, which refuses to fashion itself into fairy forms or airy castles in obedience to romantic fancy. Mr. Leonard Grover actually swore (in Latin, of course, for he was too well-mannered to swear in English), that it was the most irritating and pestiferous smoke he had ever encountered since he left his native town of Pittsburg, where a man, by the way, has a fine chance of studying the effects of smoke both upon linen and temperament. Mr. Grover was, however, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... After a while a pestiferous and annoying creature of the insect kind appeared in the guise of the Ro-tay-yo (a huge mosquito). It first appeared among the Tuscaroras along the Neuse river. It flew about with vast wings, making a loud noise, with a long stinger; ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... when it was noised abroad that he had proposed that all the colored men of the county should band together to protect themselves against this evil, as he chose to regard it, he was at once branded not only as "dangerous" but as a "desperate" and "pestiferous" nigger, instead of being ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... a genuine right to those names which are often ridiculed by the ignorant. For he will be more properly called king than Tarquin, who was able to govern neither himself nor his family; he will deserve to be called the master of the people more than Sylla, who was only the master of three pestiferous vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty; he will be called rich more properly than Crassus, who would never have desired to cross the Euphrates without any legitimate cause for war, if he had not been in want of something. Everything will be properly ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... had an inspiration from heaven this day. What I have been through! the sole comfort is that I have lost twenty pounds at least, from sheer anxiety. Imagine that you had not been gone an hour, when up they ride, the guerrilla that was reported to us yesterday. At their head, that pestiferous Col. Diego Moreno. He dismounts, demands coffee, bananas, what there is. I go to get them; and, the saints aiding me, I meet in the face the pretty Manuela. Another instant, and she would have been on the verandah, would have been seen by these swine, female curiosity having led ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... contradiction, as indeed nothing can. If you are a man, you have shut your mouth hard and said nothing; and if you are only a man in the making, you have recognised that yours was quite a special case, and you yourself not guilty of your own pestiferous career. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... suffused the heavens. An appalling stillness pervaded nature; even the insects were silent. For the first time in his pilgrimage, a feeling of deep despondency fell over the soul of Alroy. His energy appeared suddenly to have deserted him. A low hot wind began to rise, and fan his cheek with pestiferous kisses, and enervate his frame with its poisonous embrace. His head and limbs ached with a dull sensation, more terrible than pain; his sight was dizzy, his tongue swollen. Vainly he looked around for aid; vainly ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... under its auspices, who was at once the child and champion of all its atrocities and horrors? Our security in negotiation is to be this Buonaparte, who is now the sole organ of all that was formerly dangerous and pestiferous in the Revolution.... If peace afford no prospect of security; if it threaten all the evils which we have been struggling to avert; if the prosecution of the war afford the prospect of attaining complete security; and if it may be prosecuted with increasing ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... hall, with a first-class upright piano of delicious tone, and at least a half dozen creditable performers to awaken the soul of it; a good table, good weather, good luck, and positively nothing to do but have a good time for three solid weeks in the wilderness. The pestiferous telephone can not play the earwig on board this ship; the telegraph, with metallic tick, can not once startle us by precipitating town tattle; the postal service is cut off; wars and rumors of wars, the annihilation of a nation, even the swallowing ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... She has been constantly in that pestiferous place. All Worth would say was that she must be kept quiet and cool, but he has sent the same draughts for all three. I saw, for Terry's came here. I fancy Worth spoke out plainly to that maid of Cecil's, Grindstone; but she only looks bitter ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... those of his lordship, that she is said never to have asked him a single question relative to that glorious victory which had so astonished the world. On the contrary, all the scandalous insinuations, and licentious remarks, with which the Jacobinical foreign journalists had filled their pestiferous pages, relative to our hero and his friends in Italy, and which had found their way into the most thoughtless and depraved of our own newspapers, were preserved for his lordship's immediate amusement. Without introducing the reader behind the sacred ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... should'st finde thou hast dis-honor'd me. Thinke not, although in Writing I preferr'd The manner of thy vile outragious Crymes, That therefore I haue forg'd, or am not able Verbatim to rehearse the Methode of my Penne. No Prelate, such is thy audacious wickednesse, Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious prancks, As very Infants prattle of thy pride. Thou art a most pernitious Vsurer, Froward by nature, Enemie to Peace, Lasciuious, wanton, more then well beseemes A man of thy Profession, and Degree. And for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... though in fulfilment of his threat, Quentin sprang in, and looking hastily round, cried, as if in towering wrath, "Whaur are they? Whaur are thae pestiferous rebels?" ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... of a spy," he preluded, "is the signal for the ringing of joy-bells on this earth; not only because he is one of a pestiferous excess, in point of numbers, but that he is no true son of earth. He escaped out of hell's doors on a windy day, and all that we do is to puff out a bad light, and send him back. Look at this fellow in whom conscience is operating so that he appears ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... friend," said the priest, putting his hand on the captain's arm; "remember that the means sanctifies the end. We can allow no Calvinists to exist, either here or abroad. They would be continually coming back with their pestiferous doctrines, or, finding themselves in the majority, would speedily put an end to our holy Church. They must be ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston

... the peasant women of Poland had learned that the annoying skin disease from which they suffered was caused by an almost invisible insect, and, furthermore, had acquired the trick of dislodging the pestiferous little creature with the point of a needle. From them a youth of the country, F. Renucci by name, learned the open secret. He conveyed it to Paris when he went there to study medicine, and in 1834 demonstrated it to his master Alibert. This physician, at first sceptical, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... interesting drill. Pestiferous little man disturbed nature, and it all seemed so absurd out there on those quiet gray hills. It made me feel, as I slowed down and gazed at the vastness of things, like a superior sort of bug. In the middle distance several hundred troops are of no more proportion than an old cow ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... whole thing—the dampness which mildewed his shoes and rusted out his nettings; the day heat which kept him bathed in clamminess; the pestiferous insects; the forest with its voices like sobbings and hammerings and demoniac chatterings; the food he had to eat; the company he had to keep; the chiefs who bored him; the girls who derided him; the beachcombers who nauseated him; the white sands, the blue waters, the smells, the sounds, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... strengthened its fortifications, to resist, as he said, the threatened attacks of Duke Eric of Brunswick and his German mercenaries. A printing-press was established in the place, whence satirical pamphlets, hymn-books, and other pestiferous productions, were constantly issuing to the annoyance of government. Many lawless and uproarious individuals enjoyed the Count's hospitality. All the dregs and filth of the provinces, according to Doctor Viglius, were accumulated at Viane as in a cesspool. Along ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a sudden turn toward the bottom of the wide depression as though it wearied of dodging rocks and preferred the loose sand below. Of his own accord Rabbit broke into a steady lope, flinging his head sidewise now and then to discourage the pestiferous gnats that swarmed about his ears. Starr, also driven to action of some kind, began to fling his hands in long sweeping gestures past his face. He hoped that the cabin, being on a higher bit of ground, would be free ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... the United States. They make a specialty of bank work and from the number of forgers apprehended and convicted know just how the work is done. A careful reading of this chapter will put bankers and the public on their guard against the most pestiferous rascals they have to ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... either hand. They ascended steeply, bordered on each side by long, contiguous walls of high houses, and from the time of their first being built, could never have had a gleam of sunshine in them,—always in shadow, always unutterably nasty, and often pestiferous. The nastiness which I saw in Marseilles exceeds my heretofore experience. There is dirt in the hotel, and everywhere else; and it evidently troubles nobody,—no more than if all the people were pigs in a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... selfishness masked with fanaticism, were pouring volleys of musketry into Huguenot congregations, imprisoning for life those innocent of all but their faith,—the men in the galleys, the women in the pestiferous dungeons of Aigues Mortes,—hanging their ministers, kidnapping their children, and reviving, in short, the dragonnades. Now, as in the past century, many of the victims escaped to the British colonies, and became a part of them. The Huguenots would have hailed as a boon the permission to ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... roared Sir Pertinax. "A stable? Straw? This to me, thou filthy clapper-claw, Thou fly-blown cod's-head, thou pestiferous thing!" And, roaring, on the ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... is a strike in the West Virginia mines, and it has sent a mass of ruffians out looking for work. We need all the people we can get, but they are a pestiferous outfit. I am opening up a camp in Bear Run, and our orders are enormous already, but I hate littering the valley with these swine. They are as insolent and dirty as Turks. Pete says the village smells, and has ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... although myriads were swept away and drowned in the rushing waters, many were borne to the other side and continued their journey. In some cases, where the current was not strong, a sort of living bridge was formed, over which immense numbers of these pestiferous insects passed in safety and dry shod. Nothing seemed to check their progress ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... the stoves empty. As, for the maintenance of warmth, every crevice in the cars was stopped, the misery of close and unwholesome atmosphere was added to their sorrows. The writer, as an old traveller, has had some experience of odd sleeping dens, and has been obliged at times to inhale a pestiferous air, though he has never endured so much from this discomfort as in his winter passage on the Pacific Railway. For hours in the long nights, as well as in the day, he preferred standing outside on the platform, with the thermometer ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... that might have a tendency to teach the people anything outside of their tenets which were the outcome of their weird imaginations. If anything could cause a doubt to arise in the Creative Mind as to the wisdom of letting loose on this small planet the pestiferous peoples that have swarmed over and possessed it, it must have been aroused by their demoniacal performances in the name of religion, that have disgraced the nature of man from the beginning of our knowledge of the world. While a perception ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... diminished in numbers. Trebia and Trasimene had both lessened their strength, but their losses had been much heavier in the terrible march across the Apennines in the spring, and by fevers subsequently contracted from the pestiferous malaria of the marshes in the summer. In point of numbers the gaps had been filled up by the contingents furnished by their Gaulish allies. But the loss of all the elephants, of a great number of the cavalry, and of the Carthaginian troops, who formed the backbone ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... worse condition than now," observed another; "starving in this pestiferous atmosphere filled with the malaria from that swamp, and the effluvia from half-decayed corpses; men dying every day, almost every hour, from ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... room quite overcome. 'You foolish fellow!' he said, 'Was it for this that you have been toiling and throwing away your health in that pestiferous place? Edward, did you ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... little faith in physicians, laughed, and exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, when you see so many men alive in England at this instant, why should you believe in the impossibility of your living even in this pestiferous country?" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... I appeal to your own consciences, who are my brethren, if there be any privilege or liberty that ever Christ gave us, but they have taken it from us, and made a prey of it. 2. This mountain is a pestiferous mountain; it hath been the mountain that hath been as a pest, to infect the kirk of Christ with superstition, heresy and error; and withal, it hath been a destroying mountain; for they have destroyed the fair carved work of our first reformation. 3. They are mountains ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... full account of my first, my last, my only real sweetheart, for I considered the professions of that pestiferous jackeroo as merely a grotesque caricature on ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... These were the pestiferous principles of the intermeddlers, who disturbed the tranquillity of Ribblesdale, and alienated the minds of the people from their good pastor. The doctrine of Davies was most popular, for Morgan cut only the fifth commandment and its dependant duties out of the decalogue, while ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... proves ruinous to your government? You go to Africa to purchase slaves for foreign markets, and lose the advantages of all the proper articles of commerce, which that country affords. You bury your seamen upon the pestiferous shores; and, shocking to humanity! make monsters of all you ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... practice of it is so easy and lazy and uppish that it is very common, but its cry is drowned by a louder and more sincere one. We who do not want to know, also do not want to go blind, to go mad, to be disfigured, to be barren, to become pestiferous, or to see such things happening to our children. We learn, at last, that the majority of the victims are not the people of whom we so glibly say, 'Serve them right,' but quite innocent children and innocent ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... his murky "wings with dreadful shade contiguous," and fills the land with tears of blood—you look over this frightful aceldama and mourn at the soul-chilling spectacle. When infidelity and licentiousness exhale their pestiferous breath, to poison the moral atmosphere and destroy the rising hope of our country, by undermining the virtue of our youth; the Christian's heart is pained, and every effort is put forth to stay the march of desolation. In short, whatever tends ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... the murkiness in the far sky told that a yet larger centre of industry lurked beyond the horizon. Dunfield offered no prominent features save the chimneys of its factories and its fine church, the spire of which rose high above surrounding buildings; over all hung a canopy of foul vapour, heavy, pestiferous. Take in your fingers a spray from one of the trees even here on the Heath, and its touch left ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... "Conflict of Religion and Science," p. 263). "The surface of the Continent was for the most part covered with pathless forests; here and there it was dotted with monasteries and towns. In the lowlands and along the river courses were fens, sometimes hundreds of miles in extent, exhaling their pestiferous miasms, and spreading agues far and wide." In towns there was "no attempt made at drainage, but the putrefying garbage and rubbish were simply thrown out of the door. Men, women, and children slept in the same apartment; not unfrequently ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... and prosecute in safety researches into ancient sepulchres or temples. His great passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, in his neighbourhood; with what result I know not, never having penetrated so far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous with malaria. He wore the Eastern dress, and always carried jewels about him. I came to the conclusion that for the sake of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps by some of his own servants (and, indeed, two at least of his suite were missing), who then ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that pestiferous gang out of our manifestations," said Jean now to Monsieur de Beauchamp,—"they ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... manifests life. Among animals, those calculated to inspire terror by their mysterious movements were chosen, as serpents appearing and disappearing with startling suddenness, or ugly scorpions, against whom it was difficult to protect oneself, or the fabulous monsters with which graves and pestiferous spots were peopled. Regions difficult of access—the desert, the deep waters, the high mountains—were the favorite haunts of the demons. Some of these demons were frequently pictured in the boundary stones between ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... Jim had a heap of good citizen in him, before that pestiferous cattle outfit druv' his sheep over the cliff. Relations 'twixt sheep and cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant the goin'-back place, I can tell you. My pistol-eye 'ain't had a wink of sleep ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... tarnal, pisoned, alligator of a ring-tailed, roaring, pestiferous, rattlesnake, that critter 'the Old Country,' would jist about give up one half its skin, and wriggle itself slick out of the other, rayther than go for to put our dander up at this present identical out-and-out important critical crisis! I conceit their min'stry have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... "What an ugly brute! what a hideous dog!" but as he engages the attention of our party, these expressions become modified, and before reaching the bottom of the hill, nobody cares about the remains of Otricoli, nor looks any longer at the yellow reaches of the pestiferous Tiber, that was winding far along the plain; the dog alone occupies every thought. "Such a discerning creature! What clever eyes he has! See how well he understands what we are saying about him; suppose we take him on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... Turin, so displeasing to the Quirinal, and disapproved of the secret intrigues with the Italian Government. According to their leader, who was the very eminent personage Donna Rosetta now proposed calling upon, other measures should be adopted to liberate the Holy Father from the pestiferous influence of a rationalist varnished over with mysticism. These things Donna Rosetta had learned from the Abbe Marinier, who smiled knowingly about them in her salon. It was inconceivable how many poisonous accusations were being sown broadcast with the greatest ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... Butch Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway, his wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten, in his rapture at the glorious dawn, he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild West! The expression of indignation, however, yielded to one of humorous affection, as ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... or Soveraigne Remedie against the pestiferous Writings of all English Sectaries, and in {360} particular against Dr. Whitaker, Dr. Fulke, Dr. Bilson, Dr. Reynolds, Dr. Sparkes, and Dr. Field, the chiefe upholders, some of Protestancy, some of Puritanisme; divided into three Parts, &c., &c., &c. By S. N., doctour of divinity. Permissu ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various

... early at this pestiferous old slaughter-house,' said that gentleman, poising himself on one leg, and shaking the other in an ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the establishment and maintenance of the Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to forget all its merits? You might say ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... that old Roman one when the measure of its iniquities was full; the abysses, and subterranean and supernal deluges, plainly broken loose; in the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out. No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to any man; the pestiferous fogs, and foul exhalations grown continual, have, except on the highest mountaintops, blotted out all stars: will-o'-wisps, of various course and color, take the place of stars. Over the wild-surging chaos, in the leaden air, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... them unfit for use. After he had been shown all this, the stranger led him into another large chamber, filled with gold and precious stones, all of which he offered him if he would kneel down and worship him, and consent to smear the doors and houses of Milan with a pestiferous salve which he held out to him. tie now knew him to be the Devil, and in that moment of temptation, prayed to God to give him strength to resist. His prayer was heard - he refused the bribe. The stranger scowled horribly upon him - a loud clap of thunder ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... cleared up in our night's adventures was now soon explained. Our guide, through ignorance or thoughtlessness, had allowed us to take up our bivouac within a very unsafe distance of one of the most pestiferous swamps in the whole province. Shortly after we had fallen asleep, a party of Mexican travellers had arrived, and established themselves within a few hundred yards of us, but on a rising ground, where they avoided ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... the pestiferous air of Batavia began to show itself; for the vessel had not been five days at sea before six men were taken ill with the putrid fever; and very soon afterwards, the captain, his two mates, and all ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... they saw a column erected to the memory of the officers and men of the 59th Regiment, which regiment, in the course of nine years, lost 644 persons, including a number of women and upwards of 100 children; the greater number cut down not by the weapons of the enemy, but by the pestiferous climate. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... raw material of poetry. An odd parallel may be found between one of the most striking passages in 'Villette' and one in 'Transformation.' Lucy Snowe in one novel, and Hilda in the other, are left to pass a summer vacation, the one in Brussels and the other in pestiferous Rome. Miss Snowe has no external cause of suffering but the natural effect of solitude upon a homeless and helpless governess. Hilda has to bear about with her the weight of a terrible secret, affecting, it may be, even the life of her ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... kept bare of surface-vegetation, they nevertheless will form a portion of the root-pasturage of the shade and fruit trees. The land, also, can be more evenly and deeply plowed before obstructions are placed upon it, and roots, pestiferous weeds, and stones removed with greatest economy. Moreover, the good initial enriching is capital, hoarded in the soil, to start with. On many new places I have seen trees and plants beginning a feeble and uncertain life, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... water animals. It reminded me of the mosquito netting as a safe-guard against flies and other insects in our world. But the mosquito baffles our genius, for he seems to be able to get through as small an opening as air can. Likewise, the pestiferous water animals seem to invade the homes of Stazza, notwithstanding all ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... the governor by my importunities. I collected wine and cordials, and whatever could be of service, and after his first outburst my young brother-in-law helped me in a way I can never forget. No doubt the pestiferous air caused by the horrible carnage of Freiburg had poisoned the wound. As soon as possible my husband was removed; but the mischief had been already done; the wound was in a bad state, fever had set in, and though he ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... liberty, for national life, for our homes and our inheritance, and for the oppressed, is elevating, purifying. War is terrible in itself, and in some of its consequences, but there is a bow on the cloud. When the bolt has spent itself in the pestiferous air, all nature is bright and glorious. With true discipline, soldiers are made vigorous in body; they are also quickened in mind by the tactics and incitements of warfare, they are ennobled by high motives, and may leave the campaign better than when they entered ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams

... I tried to get away, but it dragged me back—a brutal thing it was. Oh, then at that moment, Henry, I felt as if something strange took place in my brain, and that I was going mad! I saw those glazed eyes close to, mine—I felt a hot, pestiferous breath upon ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... should see that the teacher does his duty; otherwise all his lessons in duty are of no avail, and the school, instead of being a source of purity, delicacy, and refinement, becomes a fountain of corruption, throwing out poisonous waters, and rendering the moral influence more pestiferous than that fabled fountain of old, over which no creature of heaven could fly ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... very brave honest witnesses, and need no support from your lips. Suppose we enter into negotiations and compromise matters between Mrs. Palma and you? This troublesome dog is a pestiferous creature, which might possibly be tolerated in country clover fields, but is most woefully out of place in a Fifth Avenue house. Beside, you will soon be a young lady, and your beaux will leave you no leisure to pet ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... and procrastinated. But it is not easy to restrain the hound when within sight of the game which it has long pursued. Before the eyes of Sir Edmund lay that pestiferous paper which had given him such annoyance. His impatience was no longer to be restrained. In the midst of the long-drawn-out oratory of the members he rose and stepped towards the table to seize ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... ever hear such a pestiferous child!" said Mr. Button, laughing as he spoke. "His questions and his tongue run ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay



Words linked to "Pestiferous" :   vexing, dirty, galling, pestilential, septic, disagreeable, bothersome, vexatious, irritating, teasing, plaguy, nettlesome, corruptive, epidemic



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