white plague

Questions about white plague

What does white plague mean?

white plague means "involving the lungs with progressive wasting of the body". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for white plague?

Close synonyms include pulmonary tuberculosis, consumption, phthisis, wasting disease, drug addiction. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is white plague a common word?

white plague is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.