All 4 Uses

pestilence
in
Year of Wonders
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So how could he have been touched by the city's pestilence?†
Chpt 3 *
From this I believe we can grasp how this pestilence spreads, and to whom.†
Chpt 9
We sang then, against the roar of the burning, the Psalm that we had sung countless times since the Plague came: "Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that IN alketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.†
Chpt 13
The first was to tell the earl that he believed the pestilence was fled at last and to beg that the roads to the village be reopened.†
Chpt 15

Definitions:

(1) (pestilence)
widespread disease (usually severe); or any severely harmful or evil influence that is hard to get rid of
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)