Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia (pronounced mes-uh-puh-tey-mee-uh)

An ancient region of West Asia between the lower and middle reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; the site of several ancient civilizations including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Hittites and Assyrians.

Pre AD: From the Classical Latin Mesopotamia, from the Koine Greek Μεσοποταμία (Mesopotamía), a feminine substantive form of the adjective μεσοποτάμιος (mesopotámios) (between rivers), from the Ancient Greek μέσος (mésos) (between) + ποτᾰμός (potamós) (river) + -ιος (-ios), so called because Mesopotamia is located between the Tigris & Euphrates Rivers.  It was also used as a translation of the Biblical Hebrew נַהֲרַיִם‎ (naharáyim), the dual form of נָהָר‎ (nahár) (river).  The Arabic forms were بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن‎‎ (Bilād ar-Rāfidayn) or بَيْن ٱلنَّهْرَيْن‎ (Bayn an-Nahrayn), the Persian was میان‌رودان‎ (miyân rudân), and the Syriac ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪܝܢ‎ (Beth Nahrain) (land of rivers) also come from the ancient Greek root words mesos and potamos, translating to “land between rivers”.  It was used throughout the Greek Septuagint (circa 250 BC) to translate the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent Naharaim but an even earlier Greek usage is evident from The Anabasis of Alexander, written in the late second century AD, but specifically referring to sources from the time of Alexander the Great.  In the Xenophon’s (circa 430 BC-354 BC) Anabasis (circa 370 BC), Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria.

The Aramaic term biritum (or birit narim) corresponded to a similar geographical concept but Mesopotamia later came generally to be applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and southeastern Turkey, the neighboring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the western part of the Zagros Mountains also often included.  A further distinction is usually made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia.  Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazira, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad. Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran.  In modern academic use, Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation, used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests, with names like Syria, Jazira, and Iraq being used to describe the region after that date although some revisionist critics argue these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the milieu of the nineteenth century colonial and other Western encroachments.

The Mandate for Mesopotamia

The Mandate for Mesopotamia (الانتداب البريطاني على العراق‎ in the Arabic) was a proposed League of Nations mandate to cover Ottoman Iraq (Mesopotamia); it would have been entrusted to the British but was superseded by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, an agreement with some similarities to the proposed mandate.  The proposed mandate was not formalised and although in accordance with the Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916; negotiated between English politician Colonel Sir Mark Sykes (1879–1919) & French Diplomat François Georges-Picot (1870–1951), was never documented or defined beyond a draft paper prepared by the UK's Colonial Office (and an exhaustive publication of those would run to several volumes).

The proposed Mandate for Mesopotamia (a 1920 map from the archives of the UK's Colonial Office).

London’s plans included the annexation of Mesopotamia to India "as a colony of the Indians” and of course included the typically cynical British colonial fix: support for the minorities: the Jewish community in Baghdad, the notables in Baghdad and Basar, the rich landowning Arabs and Jews, and the Shaikhs of sedentary tribes.  The British Empire might have been theft on history's grandest scale achieved by the splutter of musketry, but along the way, by means of mutual back-scratching, some others did OK and as an afterthought, Mosul was bolted on to the British sphere of influence, the spoils of a deal between French prime minister Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) and his British counterpart, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922).  The mandate was never established as unrest overtook Iraqi so the Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration, or Mandatory Iraq (الانتداب البريطاني على العراق‎) (al-Intidāb al-Brīṭānī ‘Alá al-‘Irāq) was instead created, pursuant to the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1922), full independence granted in 1932.  The sweep of territories from Rangoon to the Rock of Gibraltar continue to reverberate from the lines the colonial powers drew on maps.

Terpsichore

Terpsichore (pronounced turp-sik-uh-ree)

(1) In Classical Mythology, the goddess of dancing and choral song and one of the nine Muses who were daughters of Zeus (god of sky and thunder) & Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory).

(2) In choreography; the art of dancing (should always be lowercase).

(3) In astronomy (as 81 Terpsichore), a main belt asteroid.

Circa 1760: From the Classical Latin Terpsichorē from the Ancient Greek Τερψιχόρη (Terpsikhórē) (literally “enjoyment of dance”), noun use of the feminine of terpsíchoros (delighting in the dance), the construct being τέρψις (térpsis; térpein) (to delight; enjoyment) + χορός (khorós) (dance; chorus); it’s from terpsíchoros that English gained chorus.  The Greek was térpein was from the primitive Indo-European root terp- (to satisfy) source also of Sanskrit trpyati (takes one's fill) and the Lithuanian tarpstu & tarpti (to thrive, prosper).

The adjective terpsichorean (pertaining to dancing (literally “of Terpsichore”)) dates from 1869, and was from the Latinized form of the Greek noun terpsikhore (Muse of dancing and dramatic chorus).  From this came the theatrical slang terp (stage dancer, chorus girl) noted since 1937.  The adjectival form terpsichorean often appears with an initial capital letter because of its etymology from a proper noun.  Either is acceptable but the conventions of Modern English tend eventually to prevail which suggests use of the capital T will reduce with time but, given the rarity of the word except in a few technical and historical disciplines, the classic form is likely to endure among those few who enjoy its use.

In the mythology of Ancient Greece, nine goddesses ruled over art and literature.  The Greeks called them Muses and the Muse of dance and choral music was Terpsichore.  Of late she’s been of interest to astronomers who adopted her as a metaphor for the rhythm and ordered movement in the universe, such as mechanical oscillations.  In Archaic Greece, there were but three Muses, all associated with song and dance; it was only in the classical period they became nine and assigned to distinct spheres: Calliope of epic poetry, Clio of history, Euterpe of lyric poetry, Erato of love poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Polyhymnia of hymns, Thalia of comedy, Urania of astronomy, and Terpsichore of dance and choral music.  The daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, they dwelt in the land of Pieria in the foothills of Mount Olympus.  In later mythology, writers tended to compare the Muses to the sirens but while both were young nymphs famous for their beautiful songs, the Muses sang to enrich men’s souls while the sirens were chthonic and sang to lure them to their deaths.

The Greek historian Herodotus (circa 484-425 BC) wrote his Ἱστορίαι (historíai̯; in the West styled variously as The History or The Histories of Herodotus)) as an account of the Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC).  Although there was once some doubt about the veracity as a historical document (reflecting more the scepticism about medieval editors and translators than the original texts), modern research has concluded the work is one of the most reliable histories from antiquity.  Herodotus was called “The Father of History” by the Roman orator Cicero (103-46 BC) because of the quality of his writing but he's also now acknowledged as the father of historiography's modern structural form.  Written histories had existed prior to Herodotus but he was the first to adopt a recognizably modern thematic form.  At some unknown time, one or more editors reorganized The History into nine chapters, each name after a Muse, one of which was Terpsichore:  Book I (Clio), Book II (Euterpe), Book III (Thalia), Book IIII (Melpomene), Book V (Terpsichore), Book VI (Erato), Book VII (Polymnia), Book VIII (Urania) & Book IX (Calliope).

The Muse Terpsichore In Ancient & Modern Greece.  Allegory of the Muse Terpsichore playing a harp, from the Florentine School of the eighteenth century, oil on canvas by an unknown artist (left) and Lindsay Lohan dancing The Lilo, Lohan Beach House, Mykonos, Greece, 2018 (right).

Despite the similarity, there’s no verified connection between khorós (dance; chorus) and χώρᾱς (khṓrās), inflection of χώρᾱ (khṓrā) (location, place, spot; the proper place; one's place in life; piece of land: tract, land, field; country (as opposed to a city or town), countryside; country, nation.  The origin of khôra is unknown and it may be from a Pre-Greek substrate or other regional language although speculative links have been suggested including χᾰ́ος (kháos) (empty space, abyss, chasm) and χατέω (khatéō) (to lack, miss, need, desire) but few etymologists have supported either and the lack of cognates beyond the Greek rendered research a dead end.  Khōra had been adopted as the ancient name for the land lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers north of Babylon (modern-day Iraq), from the Greek mesopotamia (khōra (literally "a country between two rivers)), from the feminine of mesopotamos, the construct being mesos (middle), from the primitive Indo-European root medhyo- (middle") + potamos (river).  That use borrowed directly from the discussions from Antiquity.

However, khôra did attract the interest of those scourges of late twentieth century linguistics: the French deconstructionists.  Their attention seems to have been excited by the concept of khôra in the sense of “the territory of the Ancient Greek polis which lay beyond the city proper”.  The philosophers of Antiquity, noting the idea of khôra simultaneously as (1) the physical space between city & the wilderness, (2) the time it takes to transverse the space and (3) one’s state of mind while in the space.  It was very much a concept of the indeterminate, a triton genos (third kind), being neither civilization nor the state of nature and city nor wilderness and few things so appealed to the deconstructionists as the indeterminate.

Of course, one attraction of deconstruction was that it was in itself a layer of indeterminacy and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), post-modernism’s most famous explorer of khôra in the context of apophatism or negative theology, was interested not how the word had been understood in the traditions of metaphysics & metaphorics but what meaning could be constructed for something which is neither present or absent, passive or active.  The findings from khôra’s time on post-modernism’s autopsy table did illustrate why deconstruction gained a special role in language because there was surely no other way that Plato’s entirely cosmological concept could become psycho-linguistic and produce, in all seriousness, the idea of khôra as “container of the uncontainable”.  Plato (circa 425-circa 347 BC) had imagined khôra as that space through which something could pass but in which nothing could remain so thus to a French deconstructionist the very essence of tout autre (fully other) and from there it wasn’t very far to the idea of khôra also as time and space interacting.  At that point, in the tradition of post-modernism, khôra meant whatever the observer decided it meant.

The Terpsichore in Modern Greece: Lindsay Lohan dancing The Lilo, Lohan Beach House, Mykonos, Greece, 2018.

Pandemic & Epidemic

Pandemic (pronounced pan-dem-ik)

(1) Of a disease, prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area (in modern use, now usually restricted to diseases spread over several continents, reaching epidemic level in at least two.

(2) In figurative use, general; universal.

1660-1670: From the Late Latin pandēmus (affecting all the people, public, general) from the Ancient Greek pandēmos (general) and the Ancient Greek πᾶν (pân) (all; equivalent to English pan-) + δῆμος (dêmos) (the people); the suffix –os was the adjectival form.  The suffix –ic is from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European –kos.  The form existed in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (ikós), in the Sanskritas as श (śa) & क (ka) and in the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); a doublet of -y.  The suffix –ic is often added to words of Greek or Latin origin, but may be used regardless of source.  In modern English, there is sometimes the creation of redundant forms such as veganic (from vegan).  Related words include the nouns pandemia & pandemicity and the adjective interpandemic.

Epidemic (pronounced ep-i-dem-ik)

(1) Of a disease and affecting many persons at the same time, and spreading from person to person in a locality where the disease is not permanently prevalent.

(2) Extremely prevalent; widespread; a rapid spread or increase in the occurrence of something.

1595-1605: From the French épidémique, from épidémie, from the Latin epidemia, from the Ancient Greek ἐπιδήμιος (epidḗmios), from ἐπί (epí) (upon) + δῆμος (dêmos) (people) the Ancient Greek epidēmía translates literally as “among the people” but is often cited as “staying in one place”.  The early alternative forms epidemy and epidemick are long obsolete and related forms include the noun epidemicity, the adjectives interepidemic & preepidemic and the adverb epidemically.

Noted Pandemics

HIV/AIDS Pandemic (2005-2012)

Death Toll: 36 million; Cause: HIV/AIDS

First identified in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic with some 35 million people living with HIV, the vast majority in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 5% of the population (circa 21 million) is infected.  The AIDS death toll is thought to be understated because (1) dubious validity of statistical record-keeping in some countries (there are places where many deaths are not accompanied by a death certificate) and (2) a cultural reluctance among families to have AIDS recorded as the cause because of the association with homosexuality and IV drug use, hence the 1980s spike in recorded deaths from pneumonia.     

Flu Pandemic (1968)

Death Toll: 1 million; Cause: Influenza

A category 2 Flu also known as “Hong Kong Flu,” it was caused by the H3N2 strain of the Influenza A virus, an offshoot of H2N2.  It took only days to reach Singapore and Vietnam, and, within three months, had spread to The Philippines, India, Australia, Europe, and the US.  Although wide-spread, it had a low mortality rate under 1%.  Worst affected was Hong Kong where 500,000 died, some 15% of the population.

Lindsay Lohan thanking the Dubai Police for their helpfulness during COVID-19 pandemic, Dubai, April 2020.  Note the proxemics.

Asian Flu (1956-1958)

Death Toll: 2 million; Cause: Influenza

A pandemic of Influenza A of the H2N2 subtype, it originated in China, spreading from the province of Guizhou to Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States.  Estimates for the death toll vary but the World Health Organization (WHO) lists 2 million deaths, 69,800 of them in the US.

Flu pandemic (1918-1919)

Death Toll: 20-50 million; Cause: Influenza

The best known pandemic, it infected over a third of the world’s population, killing between 20–50 million.  The mortality rate was a high 10-20% and unusually, where influenza had previously killed mostly juveniles, the elderly or already weakened patients, the 1918 pandemic disproportionally killed robust and healthy young adults, leaving children and those with weaker immune systems still alive.  The movement of vast numbers of people around the world at the end of WWI assisted the spread.

Sixth Cholera pandemic (1910-1911)

Death Toll: 800,000+; Cause: Cholera

Like its previous five incarnations, the Sixth Cholera Pandemic originated in India where it killed over 800,000, before spreading to the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia.  It was the source of the last American outbreak of Cholera although effective public health measures there restricted the death toll to eleven.  Cholera, a classic Medieval disease, remains endemic in India.

Flu pandemic (1889-1890)

Death Toll: 1 million; Cause: Influenza

Know at the time as Asiatic or Russian Flu and though once to be a strain of the Influenza A H2N2, it was an outbreak of H3N8.   The first cases were observed in May 1889 in three distant locations, Bukhara in Central Asia (Turkestan), Athabasca in north-western Canada, and Greenland. The rapid growth in urban populations provided vectors for the spread and although the first true pandemic in the era of bacteriology, while much was learned from it, it claimed over a million lives.

Lindsay Lohan thanking the Dubai Police for their helpfulness during COVID-19 pandemic, Dubai, April 2020.

Third Cholera pandemic (1852–1860)

Death Toll: 1 million; Cause: Cholera

Probably the most deadly of the seven cholera pandemics, it was the third major outbreak in the 19th century.  Like the first and second, the third originated in India, before spreading with extraordinary rapidity through Asia, Europe, North America and Africa.  A physician in England, where over 20,000 died, discovered contaminated water was the means of transmission.

Lindsay Lohan mugshot facemasks available through Redbibble.

The Black Death (1346-1353)

Death Toll: 75 – 200 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague

The Plague ravaged Europe, Africa, and Asia, with a death toll of 75-200 million, killing up to half the population of some European countries.  Thought to have originated in Asia, Plague was most likely spread by fleas living on the rats of merchant ships and in some countries, populations didn’t recover until the nineteenth century.  Now unknown in most parts of the world, outbreaks still happen in various places.

Plague of Justianian (541-542)

Death Toll: 25 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague

Thought to have killed perhaps half the population of Europe, the Plague of Justinian afflicted the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean port cities.  The first verified and well-documented incident of the Bubonic Plague, it reduced the population of the Eastern Mediterranean by a quarter and devastated Constantinople, where, at the height of the pandemic, 5,000 a day were dying.

Lindsay Lohan thanking the Dubai Police for their helpfulness during COVID-19 pandemic, Dubai, April 2020.

Antonine Plague (165 AD)

Death Toll: 5 million; Cause: Unknown

Also known as the Plague of Galen, the Antonine Plague affected Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Egypt, Greece, and Italy and is thought to have been either Smallpox or Measles, though the true cause is unknown. The disease was brought to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia.  The pandemic significantly weakened the Roman army.

Cash

Cash (pronounced kash)

(1) Money in the form of coins or banknotes, historically that issued by a government or a bank or other financial institution operating with the approval of a government.

(2) Money or an equivalent paid at the time of making a purchase.

(3) Immediate payment, in full or part, for goods or services, even if not paid in physical cash (ie as distinct from the various forms of time (delayed) payment).

(4) To give or obtain cash for a check, money order, bill of exchange etc.

(5) In some games of cards, (1) to win (a trick) by leading an assured winner or (2) to lead (an assured winner) in order to win a trick.

(6) Any of several low-denomination coins of China, Vietnam, India, and the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), especially the Chinese copper coin.

1590–1600: From the Portuguese caixa, from the Tamil காசு (kācu) (a copper coin), from the Sanskrit karṣa (a weight (of precious metal such as silver or gold)).  There was also the sixteenth century Old Italian cassa (money box) from the Latin capsa (case).  Variation of cash appear in many languages including the Japanese: キャッシュ (kyasshu), the Serbo-Croatian (kȅš & ке̏ш) the Romanian cash and the Swedish cash.

Cashable is an adjective, cashability & cashableness are nouns.  The noun plural is cash (except for the proper noun; the surname’s plural being Cashes).  The homophone of cash is cache, often mispronounced as kaache although cache’s adoption as a technical term in computing has led some to suggest kaache should be the use in the industry with kash for all other purposes and there’s much support for the view which does make sense, even if, given the specificity of the context, confusion is unlikely.  The verb cashier (and the related cashiering & cashiered) is (1) the simple past tense and past participle of cashier and (2) the apparently curious term for the dismissal of a military officer, cashiered in this context from the Dutch casseren & kasseren, from the Old French casser (to break (up)).  During a ceremonial cashiering, the break of his link with the military was sometimes symbolized dramatically by literally breaking the officer’s sword (which had in advance been partly sawn through).   

The surname appears to be an American variant of Case, the records indicating it was first adopted by in the US by German immigrants named Kirch and Kirsch, an example of the Anglicization of names once a common of those migrating to the English-speaking world.  In rare cases it has been used a male given name, often as a second name reflecting the mother’s maiden name.  A cashier (person in charge of money), dates from the 1590s, from the French caissier (treasurer), from caisse (money box), the immediate source of the English word perhaps the Middle Dutch kassier.

Lindsay Lohan themed cash.  Unfortunately, these Lohanic notes are not issued by the US Federal Reserve and thus neither legal tender nor readily convertible (at least at face-value) to other currencies.  However, Lindsay Lohan is dabbling in the embroynic world of the NFT (non fungible token) which may evolve to have some influence on the development of how cash is stored and exchanged (if not valued).   

In idiomatic use, cashing-in one’s chips means literally to take one’s winnings and leave the casino but is also used to mean “to die” whereas cashing-up is a technical term from business referring to the end-of-day audit & balancing procedures.  A moneybags (ie bags full of cash) is someone (usually conspicuously) rich.  A cash-cow is a product or service which dependably provides the owner or operator a lucrative profit.  A cash-crop (agricultural product grown to sell for profit) is attested from 1831 and was distinct from one with some other primary purpose (such as for self-sustenance or stock-feed).  A cash-back is a trick in advertising and a form of discount.  The phrase cold, hard cash is another way of emphasizing the primacy of money.  A cash-book (which historically were physical ledgers but most are now electronic) was a transactional register.  To cash was “to convert (a cheque (the US check) or other bill of exchange) to cash", known since 1811 as a variation of the noun and the now-extinct encash from 1865 was also used as a piece of specialized jargon meaning exactly the same thing; it was replaced as required by cashed & cashing.  The cash-box (also called money-box), dating from the 1590s, was (and remains) a box for the safe-keeping physical cash and was from the sixteenth century French caisse (money box), from the Provençal caissa or the Italian cassa, from the Anglo-Norman & Old French casse (money box), from the Latin capsa (box, case) ultimately from capiō (I take, I seize, I receive), from the primitive Indo-European kehp- (to grasp) (which also led to the Spanish caja (box); the original sense was literally the wooden or metal box by the eighteenth century, the secondary sense of the money began to run is parallel before, for most purposes, becoming the sole meaning.  To cash in is to profit from something, applying it one's advantage.  A cash-register, dating from 1875, was historically a mechanical device used to record transactions and issue receipts, such machines now mostly electronic and increasingly linked to centralized (even international) databases; in Jewish humorous use, a cash-register was “a Jewish piano”.  Cash-flow (which surprisingly seems to date only from 1954) refers to a specific characteristic of business and means the periodic accumulation of disposable revenue to permit the operations always to meet its obligations and continue trading; it’s not directly related to long-term profitability in that something with a good cash-flow can continue indefinitely while only breaking even while a profitable concern with a poorly managed cash-flow can flounder.  In commerce, use is common such as cash-and-carry, cash account, cash-only, discount for cash etc although transaction handling costs have affected the last: where once it was common for businesses to offer a discount to customers paying with physical cash (sometimes because it offered the possibility of a hidden (ie un-taxed) transaction, it’s now not uncommon for a fee to be imposed, reflecting the difference in processing costs for weightless (electronic) payments compared with the physical (notes & coins).  In criminal slang, "cash" is said to be a euphemism for “to do away with, to kill” the word "disband" also carrying this meaning and both “cash” and “disband” are reputed to be used on the dark web as code by those offering contract killing although such things are hard to verify and may be an internet myth. Cash on delivery (COD) dates from 1859 and was an invention of American commerce designed to encourage sales from businesses previously unknown to the individual consumer.  Cashless (often as cashless-society or cashless transaction) refers usually to the elimination of physical money (ie notes and coins), something sought by many bureaucrats for various reasons although of concern to civil libertarians.

According to anthropologists, the word cash (money and all that) is really derived from the word kash, a beer brewed in Ancient Egypt which was used to pay workers (including the builders of the Great Pyramids).  Stone cutters, slaves, architects, and even public officials were often paid (at least in part) with beer, two containers of kash often set as the minimum wage for an Egyptian laborer’s day of work.  At the time, there was quite a brewing industry, the Egyptians known to be distributing at least six varieties of beer by 3,000 BC and there is evidence it played a part in the social conventions of the age: in some circumstances if a man offered a lady a sip of his beer, they could be held to be betrothed so dating could be minefield for those who’d drunk too much.

The traditions associated with kash spread.  In Mesopotamia, tavern owners found guilty of overcharging patrons for beer could be sentenced to death by drowning in the Tigris or Euphrates rivers (depending on where the establishment was located) although most punishments were apparently commuted to fines.  The Ancient Babylonians, serious about beer making, to regulate quality decreed that any commercial beer maker who sold unfit beer was to be drowned in that very impure libation although no records exist which confirm how many were actually suck in their own dodgy brew.  The most attractive Babylonian tale (although not one all historians accept) is that more happily, a bride’s father would supply all the “honey" kash (a form of kash to which honey and sweet herbs were added) the groom could drink for one month after the wedding.  Because the calendar was lunar based, this month was referred to as the “honey moon”.

Plague

Plague (pronounced pleyg)

(1) An infectious, epidemic disease caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis (trans transmitted to man by the bite of the rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis)) characterized by fever, chills, and prostration.

(2) In casual use, any epidemic disease that causes high mortality; pestilence.

(3) Any widespread affliction, calamity, or evil, especially one regarded as divine retribution.

(4) Any cause of trouble, annoyance, or vexation; torment; to pester.

(5) As in “… a plague upon…”, to curse another, wishing any evil upon them.  The variation “a plague upon both your houses” suggests an unwillingness to take sides, an implication one thinks both parties are in the wrong. 

1350-1400: From the Middle English plage, a borrowing from the Old French plage, from the Latin plāga (blow, wound, (and pestilence in Late Latin), from plangō or plangere (to strike), the ultimate root being the Ancient Greek plēgē (a stroke).  It was cognate with the Middle Dutch plāghe (from the Dutch plaag) & plāghen (from the Dutch plagen), the Middle Low German plāge, the Middle High German plāge & pflāge (from the German plage) & plāgen (from the German plagen), the Swedish plåga, the French plaie and the Occitan plaga.  Plague exists as verb and noun, plaguer being the other noun, plaguing & plagued the verbs.  Other derived forms exist but are rarely seen except in historic or technical writing: plagioclase, plagioclimax, plagiohedral, plagiotropic and plagiotropism, plaguesome & plaguy.  For the actual disease there’s no actual synonym but many words tend to be used interchangeably in any context: invasion, scourge, contagion, pandemic, epidemic, curse, infection, outbreak, influenza, infestation, blight, calamity, pest, cancer, bedevil, afflict, beleaguer, bother, haunt, torment.

The famous phrase "A plague of both your houses" is from William Shakespeare's  (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1597) .  When Mercutio says a "plague o' both your houses", he is damning both the Montagues and Capulets, asking fate to visit upon the families some awful fate because he blames both for his imminent death.  In modern use, it's used to suggest an unwillingness to take sides, the implication being one thinks both parties are in the wrong:

Mercutio. Help me into some house, Benvolio,

Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!

They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,

And soundly too: your houses!

Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1

Plagues and the Plague

Masked-up: Lindsay Lohan avoiding plague.

Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and exists in three strains: Bubonic plague, Septicemic plague & Pneumonic plague, the former two usually contracted by the handling of an infected animal or the bite of a flea, the last by contact between people via infectious droplets in the air.  Typically, several hundred cases are reported annually, mostly in India, the Congo, Madagascar & Peru and cases have been reported in the US but historically, outbreaks were large-scale events lasting months or years, the best known of which include the fourteenth century Black Death, estimated to have killed some fifty-million and the Great Plague of London which, in 1665-1666, caused the death of one in five of the city's population.  COVID-19 was thus a plague but not the plague.  A common noun, plague is written with an initial capital only at the beginning of a sentence, or (as in the Great Plague of London) when it has become a thing.  Notable epidemics have included:

The Black Death (1346-1353)

Death Toll: 75 – 200 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague

The Plague ravaged Europe, Africa, and Asia, with a death toll of 75-200 million, killing up to half the population of some European countries.  Thought to have originated in Asia, Plague was most likely spread by fleas living on the rats of merchant ships and in some countries, populations didn’t recover until the nineteenth century.  Now unknown in most parts of the world, outbreaks still happen in various places.

Plague of Justianian (541-542)

Death Toll: 25 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague

Thought to have killed perhaps half the population of Europe, the Plague of Justinian afflicted the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean port cities.  The first verified and well-documented incident of the Bubonic Plague, it reduced the population of the Eastern Mediterranean by a quarter and devastated Constantinople, where, at the height of the pandemic, 5,000 a day were dying.

Antonine Plague (165 AD)

Death Toll: 5 million; Cause: Unknown

Also known as the Plague of Galen, the Antonine Plague affected Asia Minor (the modern Republic of Türkiye), Egypt, Greece, and Italy and is thought to have been either Smallpox or Measles, though the true cause is unknown. The disease was brought to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia.  The pandemic significantly weakened the Roman army.

London and the plagues of Plague

A London Bill of Mortality, 1665.

During the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries when "bubonic plague was abroad", the authorities compiled "Bills of Mortality" listing the causes of death recorded that week.  It's now believed the statistics are not wholly reliable (Plague numbers, like the global toll from Covid-19, believed greatly to have been understated) but the startling ratio of deaths attributed to Plague compared with other causes is indicative of the deadly nature of the epidemic.  In one week 3880 residents of London were reported as having succumbed to Plague, dwarfing the number recorded as dying by other causes including Old Age (54), Consumption (Tuberculous) (174), Small Pox (10), Fright (1), Grief (1), Spotted Fever and the Purples (190), Griping in the Guts (74), Lethargy (1), Rifing of the Lights (19) and Wind (1).  Like the Covid-19 statistics, there was likely some overlap in the numbers but the disparity remains striking.

After the Black Death, London's major plague epidemics occurred in 1563, 1593, 1625 and 1665 and although the last is best-known (associated as it was with the Great Fire of 1666), it's believed it was during the 1563 event the city suffered the greatest proportional mortality with between a quarter and a third of the populating dying; losses have been estimated to be as high as 18,000 and in some weeks the toll exceeded 1000.  From there, the disease spread around the nation the following year, the fleas which were the primary vector of transmission having hibernated through what was a comparatively mild winter.  Echoing the political and military effects of epidemics noted since Antiquity, it was at this time England was compelled to give up their last French possession, Le Havre, which was being held as a hostage for Calais.  Plague broke out in the occupying garrison and few troops escaped infection so the town had to be surrendered.

There were small, manageable outbreaks in 1603 & 1610-1611 but the epidemic of 1625 was severe and associated with a notable internal migration as those with the means to leave London did not, the reduction in the number of magistrates & doctors noted as inducing the predicable social consequences although as time passed, it was clear the disease was becoming less virulent and the mortality rate had fallen, something now attributed at least partially to the so-called "harvesting effect".  After 1666, the Plague didn't vanish and there were periodic outbreaks but the lessons had been well-learned and the efficiency of communications and the still embryonic public-health infrastructure operated well, even if little progress had been made in actual medical techniques.  The Hull (an East Yorkshire port city) Plague of 1699 was contained with little spread and when an outbreak of fever was reported in Marseilles in 1720, stricter quarantine measures  were imposed in English ports which successfully prevented any great spread.  Throughout the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries (as late as 1896-1897) there were occasional isolated cases and small outbreaks of plague in various parts of England but none ever remotely approached the scale of the 1665-1666 epidemic.

Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979) 

Werner Herzog's (b 1942) 1979 remake of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's (1888–1931) masterpiece of Weimar expressionism (Nosferatu (1922)) takes place mostly in a small German city afflicted suddenly by Plague, Herzog rendering something chilling and darkly austere, despite the stylistic flourishes.  The 1979 film delivered the definitive screen Dracula and was a piece to enjoy when living in the social isolation of the Covid era.

Scene from Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979)