antipestilential

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

anti- +‎ pestilential

Adjective[edit]

antipestilential (comparative more antipestilential, superlative most antipestilential)

  1. Preventing or acting as a remedy against bubonic plague or other infectious diseases.[1]
    • 1685, Robert Boyle, An Essay of the Great Effects of Even Languid and Unheeded Motion, London: Richard Davis, “An Experimental Discourse of some Unheeded Causes of the Insalubrity and Salubrity of the Air,” Proposition 3, p. 65,[2]
      [] during this time [when the Nile is overflowing] the Air is so antipestilential, that not only the Plague does not make a new Eruption; but is either wonderfully check’d or quite suppress’d in those houses that it has already invaded,
    • 1722, Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, in et al.[3], London: E. Nutt, page 36:
      Antipestilential Pills.

Noun[edit]

antipestilential (plural antipestilentials)

  1. A preventative or remedy against bubonic plague or other infectious diseases.
    • 1665, Gideon Harvey, A Discourse of the Plague, London: Nath. Brooke, Distinction 12, p. 15,[4]
      Neither, as we may universally observe, is the Plague more shie in attaquing those that are armed with the said Antipestilentials, than others that slight all Preservatives.
    • 1848, Theophilus Redwood, Gray’s Supplement to the Pharmacopœa[5], 2nd edition, London: Longman, et al, page 665:
      The electuary, which was formerly in high repute as an antipestilential, has been replaced, in English pharmacy, by the Electuarium catechu.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, London, 1755, Volume 1: “ANTIPESTILENTIAL. [] Efficacious against the infection of the plague.”[1]