Etymology

pox

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Today it means: A disease characterized by skin eruptions (especially purulent ones) that may leave pockmarks. Full definition →

Middle English pocke
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited frompocke
  2. English todaypox

From the plural of Middle English pocke. See also pock. The curse sense involves metonymy: wishing a literal pox upon someone is the original form of pox-relevant curse, and the word pox itself also came to mean curse.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.