plague spot

plural plague spots

1. medicineA spot on the skin that is characteristic of the plague or of a similar disease.

   The first victim died 6 September after three days of illness when he developed swellings in the groin and neck and the fatal token, the plague spot.

   2011, Ole Benedictow, What Disease was Plague?, page 286

   1 more example

   But no plague-spot appeared, and when Steb woke up in the afternoon and demanded something to eat, it was pretty evicent that he was merely suffering from a feverish cold.

   1881, Edward Newenham Hoare, The Brave Men of Eyam, Or, A Tale of the Great Plague Year, page 193

   Synonyms: God's token

2. A location where plague is active.

   However, with the growth of young animals, the gerbils visit neighboring burrows and the plague spot therefore expands.

   2016, Ruifu Yang, Andrey Anisimov, Yersinia pestis: Retrospective and Perspective, page 111

   1 more example

   He notes that South Elmham deanery 'appears to have been a plague spot', but regrettably he supplies no reason for its unenviable condition.

   2005, J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles, page 98

3. figurativelyA location that is a plague or scourge; a place of corruption and degeneracy.

   He is the human hyena and moral leper who runs the scurrilous, venal, unspeakable rag around on Fifth Avenue, a creature whose base, degraded nature has made him a portable plague spot wherever he goes.

   1956, John D. Bright, Kansas: The First Century - Volume 2, page 440

   2 more examples

   Suffice it that all that is most worthless in Europe may be seen gathered round the gaming-tables at Monte Carlo. The artist who did these drawings has been there. Well, I thank Heaven we have no such plague-spot in this fair England of ours.

   1899, The Butterfly - Volumes 1-2

   He turned the worst plague spot in Oxford, with its plague pit where lay 'filth, rotten corpses, and intestines of corpses', the dump of the refuse of the town, 'where thieves and malefactors used to lie in wait for opportunities of thieving, homicide, and other intolerable evils', into a splendid home for classical learning in which good Churchmen were to be trained.

   1937, Robert Theodore Gunther, Early science in Oxford, page 135