| 释义 |
epidemic, a. and n.|ɛpɪˈdɛmɪk|
[ad. Fr. épidémique, f. épidémie (see epidemy).]
A. adj.
1. Of a disease: ‘Prevalent among a people or a community at a special time, and produced by some special causes not generally present in the affected locality’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
1603Lodge Treat. Plague B ij b, Epidemick..common vnto all people, or to the moste part of them. 1622Bacon Hen. VII 6 It was conceived not to be an epidemick disease, but to proceed from a malignity in the constitution of the air. 1783Cowper Lett. 29 Sept., The epidemic fever..has prevailed much in this part of the kingdom. 1798Malthus Popul. (1817) II. 123 The endemic and epidemic diseases in Scotland fall chiefly, as is usual, on the poor. 1871Tyndall Fragm. Sc. (ed. 6) II. xii. 280 Reproductive parasitic life is at the root of epidemic disease.
fig.1642Vind. King p. iii, The Epidemicke trouble of our age. 1703Rowe Fair Penit. v. i. 1921 Contagious Fury And Epidemick Madness. 1823Scott Peveril xxxv, Influenced with..the epidemic terror of an imaginary danger. 1868M. Pattison Academ. Org. §5. 133 The mania for prize scholarships, then epidemic, infected the curators.
¶ nonce-use. Affected with an epidemic.
1781Cowper Conversation 391 We next enquire..Of epidemic throats.
†2. In more extended sense: Wide-spread, widely prevalent, universal. Obs.
1643Milton Divorce ii. xiv. (1851) 97 A toleration of epidemick whordom. 1667Waterhouse Fire Lond. 110 That Epidemique mercy that he hath obliged all by. a1745Swift Wks (1841) II. 222 The trade of universal stealing is not so epidemic there as with us.
¶3. ? That is a product of a particular region; cf. epichorial. Obs.
1634Sir T. Herbert Trav. 150 They have Arack or Usquebagh, distilled from Dates or Rice, both which are Epidemick, in their mirth and Festivals.
B. n. An epidemic disease.
1799Med. Jrnl. II. 468 He observed the variolous epidemic among a flock of sheep. 1861F. Nightingale Nursing ii. 11 There are schools..where ‘children's epidemics’ are unknown.
fig.1757Burke Abridgm. Eng. Hist. ii. ii. Wks. (1812) 267 An epidemick of despair. 1856Sir B. Brodie Psychol. Inq. I. i. 26 There are epidemics of opinion as well as of disease. |