Word of the Day

: February 8, 2011

plaguey

adjective PLAY-ghee

What It Means

: causing irritation or annoyance : troublesome

plaguey in Context

Mona was a quiet girl who loved her books and detested the annoying antics of her plaguey peers.

"What about monks? What about those stories I read as a boy featuring solitary genius inventors, working away at their crazy later-famous tasks, uninterrupted by plaguey human contact?" -- From Joan Silber’s 2008 novel The Size of the World

Did You Know?

Plagues have, well, "plagued" humanity for centuries. One sense of the word "plague," referring to a deadly fever transmitted from rodents to humans by way of infected fleas, was all too familiar to English speakers in the late 16th century. That's when the word "plaguey" first appeared on the scene as an adjective describing something relating, literally or figuratively, to a plague. The fact that "plaguey" developed its "annoying" meaning by the end of that same century suggests just how familiar, and troublesome, the disease was in those days. "Plaguey" is also sometimes used as an adverb meaning "irritatingly," as in "it is plaguey cold." (The form "plaguily" is occasionally seen as well, with the same meaning.)