What's the difference between murrain and pestilence?
Murrain
Definition:
(n.) An infectious and fatal disease among cattle.
(a.) Having, or afflicted with, murrain.
Example Sentences:
(1) Different serological methods were used in determining the valence of red murrain immune sera.
Pestilence
Definition:
(n.) Specifically, the disease known as the plague; hence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating.
(n.) Fig.: That which is pestilent, noxious, or pernicious to the moral character of great numbers.
Example Sentences:
(1) The policies of zero tolerance equip local and federal law-enforcement with increasingly autocratic powers of coercion and surveillance (the right to invade anybody's privacy, bend the rules of evidence, search barns, stop motorists, inspect bank records, tap phones) and spread the stain of moral pestilence to ever larger numbers of people assumed to be infected with reefer madness – anarchists and cheap Chinese labour at the turn of the 20th century, known homosexuals and suspected communists in the 1920s, hippies and anti-Vietnam war protesters in the 1960s, nowadays young black men sentenced to long-term imprisonment for possession of a few grams of short-term disembodiment.
(2) As in the metaphorical community in Camus' narrative, the struggle of individuals against the pestilence (including official obstruction) is imperative.
(3) Overpopulation brings decreases in economic and social progress; pestilence, famine, and fear; riots in the cities; sacrifices in personal comfort and safety; and a blow to world order.
(4) Again and again, Camus invokes some condition of well-being that has been forfeited, because the pestilence has taken hold.
(5) Both sets of MHC antigens serve to diversify immunity-repertoire gaps among individuals of a population, thus hampering epidemic spread of infection and providing a diversity of immunoreactivity that favours survival of at least some members of a population in the face of pestilence.
(6) The arguments for future massive crises due to population pressure (war, famine, and pestilence) are unconvincing.
(7) Pestilence may be stalking the planet, and the global financial system is still teetering on the edge of collapse, but there finally came a reason today for us all to cheer up: Britain is heading for a warm and dry summer.
(8) Still though, it's a tiny part of the demon's dermatology and as such, connected to all the other pestilence.
(9) For much of the intervening time, this paper has charted the continent's battles with poverty, famine, pestilence, corruption, drought, Aids and war.
(10) I do not know for how long this went on; I know that they cared for him and I know too that it was as though a golden harvest had been mowed down by a night's dark wind, or a pestilence had come into the trees, and it was unlucky even to mention his name or ask for news of him.
(11) They are not a disease or rats bringing pestilence.
(12) Innovations in disease prevention and patient care have been essential in the conquest of pestilence.
(13) Lord Dobbs, the Tory peer who wrote the TV political thriller House of Cards and who is promoting the bill, said a poll was needed because the EU had become a "pestilence".
(14) He could not stop the firm plunging into the red, reeling from attacks by computer hackers, the tsunami of 2011 and next-generation PlayStation delays, once complaining the company had been hit by "everything but toads and pestilence".
(15) In a letter to the Henley Standard he wrote: "The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.
(16) Current events once more arouse fears that the probable conclusion of our present growth era will unfortunately consist of widespread death from famine, pestilence, and social disruption of various kinds (perhaps involving nuclear devices).
(17) It has become a pestilence, it has become a poison in our political system.
(18) It is ironic that smallpox became an epidemic pestilence upon the growth of populations, yet it played a major role in preventing population growth until variolation and vaccination became common.
(19) As the four plants from which Valverde has been extracted (valerian, balm, passion-flower, and pestilence wort) have a reputation of being tranquilizing agents with spasmolytic effect, not only this effect needs to be demonstrated, but also sedative side effects and impairment of vigilance must be assessed to explore the risk for accident proneness.
(20) The shadow of Tony Blair brings with it memories of past wars and pestilences, of slick and spin.