"bubonic/pneumonic plague epidemic of 1347-51 in Europe," a modern name, introduced in English 1823 by Elizabeth Penrose's history of England. The contemporary name for it in most languages was something like "the great dying" or simply "the plague" (or, looking back after its return, "the first pestilence"). The term "Black Death" first turns up in 16c. Swedish and Danish chronicles, but in reference to a visitation of plague in Iceland in 1402-3 that carried off much of the population there (which had been spared in the earlier outbreak). The exact sense of "black" is not clear. The term appears in English translations of the Scandinavian works from 1750s. It was picked up in German c.1770 and applied to the earlier outbreak, and taken from there into English in that sense.
Black Death n.
A form of bubonic plague, caused by Yersinia pestis, that was pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia in the 14th century.
| Black Death A widespread epidemic of bubonic plague that occurred in several outbreaks between 1347 and 1400. It originated in Asia and then swept through Europe, where it killed about a third of the population. See more at bubonic plague. |
A disease that killed nearly half the people of western Europe in the fourteenth century. It was a form of the bubonic plague.