pandemic

adj

1. Of a disease: epidemic over a wide geographical area and affecting a large proportion of the population; also, of or pertaining to a disease of this nature.

   “The chaotic breakdown of public health as World War I dragged on is widely recognized as exacerbating the disease burden of the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918.”

   “Among diſeaſes, ſome do more generally haunt a Country, by reaſon of a certain property in the air, produced through a particular influence of the climat; and the fuming of malign ſtreams out of the earth; whence ſuch diſeaſes are termed Endemick or Pandemick: Others, though they are general, do only rage at a certain ſeaſon of the year, and are therefore called Epidemick; [...]”

   “Diſeaſes are likewise endemic and pandemic. [...] The pandemic affect the People in general at one and the ſame Time, without Regard to Sex, Age, Condition, or Temperament; ſuch as peſtilential Diſeaſes.”

2. (derogatory, usually)General, widespread.

   “A former age insisted upon the efficacy of scarlet curtains and red broad-cloth in small-pox—a succeeding age thinks it has proved the practice superstitious,—or they refer to it fancy. Now that said fancy is an element in the constitution of man, possibly more powerful in its effects upon the cure or aggravation of disease, than all the drugs in all the chemists' laboratories in all the towns of the world. For it is universal and not partial, pandemic and not solitary.”

   “Allow Class[ical] Ō and Ǔ to merge into a single phoneme, namely /o/, [...] and the specimens under investigation will emerge as /nodo/, /nokʼe/, and /noro/, the last-mentioned driven by an early pandemic tendency to change into /nora/ as, inherently, the designation of a female.”

3. (Greek, Roman, alt-of, not-comparable, rare)Alternative letter-case form of Pandemic (“of Aphrodite Pandemos, the earthly aspect of the Greek goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart Venus, as contrasted with the heavenly aspect known as Aphrodite Urania: earthly, physical, sensual.”).

   “The meeting of Venus with Phoebe distinguishes her roles: the business of Venus in her pandemic form is to ensure the immortality of the kinds. Her Garden has the voluptuousness necessary to ensure this, and this is 'the first seminarie / Of all things that are borne to live and die / According to their kindes.' [Quoting from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.]”

4. (Greek, Roman, not-comparable)Of Aphrodite Pandemos, the earthly aspect of the Greek goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart Venus, as contrasted with the heavenly aspect known as Aphrodite Urania: earthly, physical, sensual.

   “The same distinction between an Uranian and a Pandemic Venus runs, as all those who have any acquaintance with the sculptures of the Greeks know, through their whole art. […] The latter [the Capitoline Venus] is the true Pandemic Venus, the perfect type of voluptuousness, soulless, animal beauty,— […]”

   “That was spoken of the celestial Aphrodite, whose symbol is the tortoise, the emblem of domestic modesty and chastity: not of that baser Pandemic one.”

   “The meeting of Venus with Phoebe distinguishes her roles: the business of Venus in her pandemic form is to ensure the immortality of the kinds. Her Garden has the voluptuousness necessary to ensure this, and this is 'the first seminarie / Of all things that are borne to live and die / According to their kindes.' [Quoting from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.]”

   “For the complicated history of the Uranian and Pandemic Aphrodite of whom the Venus genetrix, the creative and vivifying force of nature, and Venus, the goddess of erotic passion, are Roman versions, see "Aphrodite" and "Venus" in Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, […]. [Allen] Tate sees the attempt to reconcile the claims of the Uranian and Pandemic Aphrodite as the lifelong concern of [John] Keats.”

noun

1. A pandemic disease; a disease that affects a wide geographical area and a large proportion of the population.

   “Those diseases which have some strong resemblance in their general characters, and attack many individuals in a large extent of country at about the same time, are commonly called epidemics. If all, or about all the inhabitants of a country be similarly attacked, at or near the same time, with a particular complaint, it is more properly called a pandemic.”

   “The full and correct theory of influenza will not be reached by the great pandemics only. On the other hand some very localized epidemics may prove to be signal instances for the pathology, although they do not bear upon the source of the great historic waves of influenza.”

   “The outbreak [of potato blight] in Ireland was part of a pandemic—that is, the disease suddenly became widespread and destructive almost simultaneously in several European countries and in the United States as well. [...] [T]he pathogen increased and became widely distributed, so that when the weather became generally and extremely favorable, as happened during the years of the pandemic, it could attack rapidly and in force over a wide area at once.”

   “The American pandemic of men's violence against women is one of the greatest tragedies of our time.”

   “In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call "the next big one."”

2. (specifically)A pandemic disease; a disease that affects a wide geographical area and a large proportion of the population.