See avoid like the plague in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for avoid like the plague meaning in English (8.9kB)
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"3": "Avoiding these the Remnuoth, a class of monks in Egypt then as though they were the plague, […]",
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"2": "Negotiatorem clericum et ex inope divitem et ex ignobili gloriosum quasi quandem pestem fuge",
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"etymology_text": "From the deadliness of the plague and the need to avoid it. Commonly attributed to similar phrases in Latin used by the priest and theologian Saint Jerome (c. 347–420) in his letters, for example:\n:\nHis igitur quasi quibusdam pestibus exterminatis veniamus ad eos,[…]\nAvoiding these [the Remnuoth, a class of monks in Egypt] then as though they were the plague, […]\n:\n[N]egotiatorem clericum et ex inope divitem et ex ignobili gloriosum quasi quandem pestem fuge\nAvoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business, one who has risen from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to a high position",
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"ref": "1872 April, “A Ramble in Peru”, in I[saac] W[illiam] Wiley, editor, The Ladies’ Repository: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature and Religion, volume XXXII (New Series, volume IX), number 16, Cincinnati, Oh.: Hitchcock and Walden; New York, N.Y.: Carlton and Lanahan, →OCLC, page 263, column 2",
"text": "It is the country of countries where the people pass their lives in enjoying the dolce far niente. Hard work is a thing they hate, and carefully avoid like the plague.",
"type": "quotation"
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{
"ref": "1925, Musical News and Herald, London: The Musical News Syndicate, →OCLC, page 389, column 1",
"text": "Without posing as experts, we believe that the first essential to the efficient teacher of the young is a sense of direction, and that the danger to avoid like the plague is the patronage of the child. In both these respects, musicians in charge of orchestral concerts for children in this country fail miserably.",
"type": "quotation"
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"ref": "1992, Marcel Proust, C[harles] K[enneth] Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and D[ennis] J[oseph] Enright, transl., “Part Two: Swann in Love”, in In Search of Lost Time: Volume 1: Swann’s Way, New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, page 267",
"text": "Evening dress was barred, because you were all \"good pals\" and didn't want to look like the \"boring people\" who were to be avoided like the plague and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom as possible and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the musician better known.",
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"ref": "1996, Elizabeth Smither, “The Journal of the Thirty-third Year: September 1975 – August 1976”, in The Journal Box, Auckland: Auckland University Press, page 4",
"text": "A lot of things I'd like to talk about and I'm avoiding like the plague.",
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"ref": "2003, Daniel J[oseph] Berrigan, “Letter to the Weathermen”, in Joy James, editor, Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion (Transformative Politics Series), Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, part II (Internationalists and Anti-imperialists), page 245",
"text": "[A] movement has historic meaning only insofar as it puts itself on the side of human dignity and the protection of life, even of the lives most unworthy of such respect. A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promised to heal.",
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"word": "vyhýbat se něčemu jako moru"
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"word": "wie die Pest meiden"
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"lang": "German",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
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"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "αποφεύγω σαν την πανούκλα"
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"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "evitare come la peste"
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"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "sky som pesten"
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"word": "evitar como uma praga"
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"sense": "to evade or shun",
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"sense": "to evade or shun"
},
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"word": "evitar como la peste"
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"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "sky som pesten"
},
{
"code": "uk",
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"roman": "utikaty, jak čort vid ladanu",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "утікати, як чорт від ладану"
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"etymology_text": "From the deadliness of the plague and the need to avoid it. Commonly attributed to similar phrases in Latin used by the priest and theologian Saint Jerome (c. 347–420) in his letters, for example:\n:\nHis igitur quasi quibusdam pestibus exterminatis veniamus ad eos,[…]\nAvoiding these [the Remnuoth, a class of monks in Egypt] then as though they were the plague, […]\n:\n[N]egotiatorem clericum et ex inope divitem et ex ignobili gloriosum quasi quandem pestem fuge\nAvoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business, one who has risen from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to a high position",
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"text": "Cliché should be avoided like the plague.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "I’m one of those people who avoids confrontations like the plague.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1872 April, “A Ramble in Peru”, in I[saac] W[illiam] Wiley, editor, The Ladies’ Repository: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature and Religion, volume XXXII (New Series, volume IX), number 16, Cincinnati, Oh.: Hitchcock and Walden; New York, N.Y.: Carlton and Lanahan, →OCLC, page 263, column 2",
"text": "It is the country of countries where the people pass their lives in enjoying the dolce far niente. Hard work is a thing they hate, and carefully avoid like the plague.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1925, Musical News and Herald, London: The Musical News Syndicate, →OCLC, page 389, column 1",
"text": "Without posing as experts, we believe that the first essential to the efficient teacher of the young is a sense of direction, and that the danger to avoid like the plague is the patronage of the child. In both these respects, musicians in charge of orchestral concerts for children in this country fail miserably.",
"type": "quotation"
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{
"ref": "1992, Marcel Proust, C[harles] K[enneth] Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and D[ennis] J[oseph] Enright, transl., “Part Two: Swann in Love”, in In Search of Lost Time: Volume 1: Swann’s Way, New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, page 267",
"text": "Evening dress was barred, because you were all \"good pals\" and didn't want to look like the \"boring people\" who were to be avoided like the plague and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom as possible and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the musician better known.",
"type": "quotation"
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"ref": "1996, Elizabeth Smither, “The Journal of the Thirty-third Year: September 1975 – August 1976”, in The Journal Box, Auckland: Auckland University Press, page 4",
"text": "A lot of things I'd like to talk about and I'm avoiding like the plague.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Daniel J[oseph] Berrigan, “Letter to the Weathermen”, in Joy James, editor, Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion (Transformative Politics Series), Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, part II (Internationalists and Anti-imperialists), page 245",
"text": "[A] movement has historic meaning only insofar as it puts itself on the side of human dignity and the protection of life, even of the lives most unworthy of such respect. A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promised to heal.",
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"translations": [
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "vyhýbat se něčemu jako moru"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "sky som pesten"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "välttää kuin ruttoa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "fuir comme la peste"
},
{
"code": "gl",
"lang": "Galician",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "evitar como a praga"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "wie die Pest meiden"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "wie der Teufel das Weihwasser meiden"
},
{
"code": "el",
"lang": "Greek",
"roman": "apofévgo san tin panoúkla",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "αποφεύγω σαν την πανούκλα"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "evitare come la peste"
},
{
"code": "no",
"lang": "Norwegian",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "sky som pesten"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "bać się jak diabeł święconej wody"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "evitar como uma praga"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "fugi ca dracul de tămâie"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"note": "бежа́ть, как чёрт от ла́дана (bežátʹ, kak čort ot ládana, literally “run away like devil from frankincense”)",
"sense": "to evade or shun"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "obxodítʹ za verstú",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "обходи́ть за версту́"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "evitar como la peste"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "sky som pesten"
},
{
"code": "uk",
"lang": "Ukrainian",
"roman": "utikaty, jak čort vid ladanu",
"sense": "to evade or shun",
"word": "утікати, як чорт від ладану"
}
],
"word": "avoid like the plague"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.