Edit page | Page history | Printable version

Blight

1. To affect with blight; to blast; to prevent the growth and fertility of. [This vapor] blasts vegetables, blights corn and fruit, and is sometimes injurious even to man. (Woodward)

2. Hence: to destroy the happiness of; to ruin; to mar essentially; to frustrate; as, to blight one's prospects. Seared in heart and lone and blighted. (Byron)

Origin: Perh. Contr. From as. Blicettan to glitter, fr. The same root as E. Bleak. The meaning to blight comes in that case from to glitter, hence, to be white or pale, grow pale, make pale, bleach. Cf. Bleach, bleak.

1. Mildew; decay; anything nipping or blasting; applied as a general name to various injuries or diseases of plants, causing the whole or a part to wither, whether occasioned by insects, fungi, or atmospheric influences.

2. The act of blighting, or the state of being blighted; a withering or mildewing, or a stoppage of growth in the whole or a part of a plant, etc.

3. That which frustrates one's plans or withers one's hopes; that which impairs or destroys. A blight seemed to have fallen over our fortunes. (Disraeli)

4. (Science: zoology) a downy species of aphis, or plant louse, destructive to fruit trees, infesting both the roots and branches; also applied to several other injurious insects.

5. A rashlike eruption on the human skin.