A widespread disease that spreads quickly through a population and causes many deaths, or anything that causes widespread harm or annoyance.
From Latin 'plaga' (a blow or wound), later used for pestilence. The word entered Old French and then English, shifting to mean 'affliction' and 'epidemic disease,' especially after the Black Death in medieval Europe.
The Black Death killed 75-200 million people in the 14th century and utterly reshaped European society—it was so catastrophic that labor shortages actually gave surviving peasants bargaining power and helped end feudalism!
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