1. To trouble, to annoy, to worry, or to torment in any manner: The question of Mark's future plagues him with doubt.

The designated countries were plagued by widespread fraud, corruption and organized crime.

2. To annoy, bother, or pester: Locusts plagued the farmers as their crops disappeared.
3. To smite or attack with pestilence, death, etc.; a scourge: The mosquitoes were beginning to plague the low lying towns, bringing illness and misery.
4. To cause an epidemic in or among men, women and children: The doctors were afraid that smallpox would begin to plague the rural communities if the medicines were not distributed immediately.
5. To afflict with any kind of evil: Henry was plagued by allergies that caused his skin to itch all his life.
6. Etymology: "affliction, calamity, evil, scourge"; also, "malignant disease", from Middle French plague, from Late Latin plaga, used in the Vulgate for "pestilence"; from Latin plaga, "stroke, wound"; probably from the root of plangere, "to strike, to lament (by beating the breast)".

The meaning of an epidemic disease that causes many deaths was first recorded in 1548-49, in the Book of Common Prayer, where the introduction of the spelling plague was first found.

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