plague [LME] The late 14th-century translation of the Bible supervised by John Wyclif introduced the word plague to English. Its root is Latin plaga ‘a stroke, wound’, and ‘a blow’ was one of its first English senses. It was also used in reference to the ten plagues of Egypt, described in Exodus. Although these included boils and the death of cattle and, finally, firstborn children, they were mainly not medical conditions, but afflictions like hordes of frogs and swarms of locusts. Nevertheless, by the late 15th century people were applying plague specifically to infectious diseases and epidemics, such as bubonic plague [E18th] (from the inflamed swellings in the armpit or groin called ‘buboes’ from the Greek word for the groin or a swelling there). The Black Death that reached England in 1348 is thought to have been bubonic plague. To avoid like the plague is not medieval, but dates from the end of the 17th century, when the Great Plague of 1665–66 was fresh in people’s memories. See also pest.