pandemic

Pluralpandemics

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A disease that spreads over a wide geographical area and affects a large proportion of the population.

   Health officials declared a pandemic once the virus reached every continent.

   Earlier pandemics, such as the 1918 influenza, killed millions worldwide.

   Similarepidemic, plague

   Note

   Medical writers have long defined the noun against epidemic. Charles Creighton, in A History of Epidemics in Britain (1894), set "the great pandemics" of influenza beside "very localized epidemics." The disease need not be human: Jessie I. Wood used the word in 1953 for the potato blight that struck Europe and the United States almost at once. Like the disapproving adjective, the noun also stretches to social ills, as in Jackson Katz's "pandemic of men's violence against women."

2. 2
   adjective

   Describing a disease that is epidemic over a wide geographical area and affects a large proportion of the population.

   Officials warned that the outbreak was rapidly becoming pandemic in scale.

   Pandemic diseases demand coordinated responses across national borders.

   Similarglobal, worldwide, widespread

   Oppositelocalized, local

   Note

   Behind this medical adjective is Greek pándēmos, "of or belonging to all the people." Richard Brookes, in An Introduction to Physic and Surgery (1754), paired it with endemic. He wrote that pandemic diseases strike people in general at one time, "without Regard to Sex, Age, Condition, or Temperament." That is still the core of the word: how many people a disease reaches at once. Its older rivals pandemial and pandemical are now obsolete.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The global outbreak of COVID-19 that began in late 2019, commonly referred to simply as the pandemic.

   Restaurants struggled to stay open throughout the pandemic.

   Many friendships moved online when the pandemic kept everyone indoors.

4. 4
   adjectivederogatory

   General and widespread, used disapprovingly to compare something undesirable to the spread of a disease.

   Apathy toward voting seems pandemic among younger residents.

   The columnist condemned the city's pandemic indifference to the homeless.

   Similarwidespread, common, universal, pervasive, prevalent

   Oppositerare, uncommon, isolated

   Note

   Most of the time the word brings the sickroom with it. Calling apathy or corruption pandemic suggests it spreads like an infection, which is why this use usually disapproves. It can be neutral, though. Yakov Malkiel, writing in 1987 on how Latin words passed into Romance, speaks of "an early pandemic tendency" in a sound change. When you want no hint of contagion, ubiquitous or universal is the safer choice.

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