pandemic
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /pænˈdɛmɪk/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈpaɳɖəmɪk/
rhymes: -ɛmɪk
Forms: form: pandemics
Etymology: From Ancient Greek πάνδημος (pándēmos, “of or belonging to all the people, public”) + English -ic (suffix forming adjectives from nouns with the sense ‘of or pertaining to’). πάνδημος is derived from παν- (pan-, prefix meaning ‘all, every’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to protect, shepherd”)) + δῆμος (dêmos, “the common people; free citizens, sovereign people”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *deh₂- (“to divide, share”)). Compare Late Latin pandēmus (“affecting all the people, general, public”).
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1832 September 5, J. A. Allen, “Epidemics. Remarks on the Etiology and Character of Epidemics.”, in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, volume VII, number 4, Boston, Mass.: Printed and published by Clapp & Hull, […], →OCLC, page 53:
text: 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.
ref: 1894, Charles Creighton, “Influenzas and Epidemic Agues”, in A History of Epidemics in Britain, volume II (From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: At the University Press, →OCLC, page 431:
text: 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.
ref: 1953, Jessie I. Wood, “Three Billion Dollars a Year”, in Alfred Stefferud, editor, The Yearbook of Agriculture 1953: Plant Diseases (83d Congress, 1st Session, House Document; no. 122), Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, →OCLC, page 6, column 1:
text: The American pandemic of men's violence against women is one of the greatest tragedies of our time.
ref: 2000, Jackson Katz, “The Sounds of Silence: Notes on the Personal Politics of Men’s Leadership in Gender-based Violence Prevention Education”, in Nancy Lesko, editor, Masculinities at School (Research on Men and Masculinities; 11), Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London: SAGE Publications, →ISBN, part 4 (Pedagogies, Polices, and Leadership), page 283:
text: 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."
ref: 2013 January–February, Katie L. Burke, “Ecological Dependency [review of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012) by David Quammen]”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, New Haven, Conn.: Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Nov 2016, page 64:
text: What I spend a lot of time worrying about are things like pandemics. You can’t build walls in order to prevent the next airborne lethal flu from landing on our shores.
ref: 2016 October, Scott Dadich, quoting Barack Obama, “Barack Obama Talks AI, Robo Cars, and the Future of the World”, in Wired, →ISSN:
text: WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. [...] We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus. This is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. And we have never before seen a pandemic that can be controlled, at the same time.
ref: 2020 March 11, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “WHO Director-General’s Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19”, in World Health Organization, archived from the original on 11 Mar 2020:
text: When the pandemic broke out, transport as a site of transmission was therefore at the forefront of medical experts' minds. And it was something they were not afraid to address publicly.
ref: 2020 April 8, Dr David Turner, “How railway staff were conduits and victims of a pandemic”, in Rail, page 31:
text: We are certainly right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase- namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So if you're saying, 'are we out of the pandemic phase in this country?', we are.
ref: 2022 April 26, Anthony Fauci, 6:12 from the start, in Dr. Fauci on why the U.S. is ‘out of the pandemic phase’, PBS NewsHour, archived from the original on 28 Apr 2022:
topics: epidemiology
medicine
sciences
synonyms: pandemia
coordinate_terms: word: endemic#Noun
word: epidemic#Noun
word: enzootic#Noun
english: nonhuman animals
translation: nonhuman animals
word: epizootic#Noun
word: panzootic#Noun
word: ;
english: plants
translation: plants
word: enphytotic#Noun
word: epiphytotic#Noun
glosses: A pandemic disease; a disease that affects a wide geographical area and a large proportion of the population.
topics: epidemiology
medicine
sciences
synonyms: pandemia
coordinate_terms: word: endemic#Noun
word: epidemic#Noun
word: enzootic#Noun
english: nonhuman animals
translation: nonhuman animals
word: epizootic#Noun
word: panzootic#Noun
word: ;
english: plants
translation: plants
word: enphytotic#Noun
word: epiphytotic#Noun
glosses: A pandemic disease; a disease that affects a wide geographical area and a large proportion of the population.
The COVID-19 pandemic.
Synonyms: word: pandemic
Derived terms: interpandemic
intrapandemic
plandemic
postpandemic
post-pandemic
prepandemic
pre-pandemic
Related terms: word: hyperepidemic
word: infodemic
word: interepidemic
word: intraepidemic
word: panepidemic
word: postepidemic
word: preepidemic
word: Black Death
word: bubonic plague
alt: coronavirus, Chinese virus, Wuhan virus
word: COVID-19
word: plague
word: Spanish flu