a. and sb. [ad. Fr. épidémique, f. épidémie (see EPIDEMY).]
A. adj.
1. Of a disease: ‘Prevalent among a people or a community at a special time, and produced by some special causes not generally present in the affected locality’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
1603. Lodge, Treat. Plague, B ij b. Epidemick … common vnto all people, or to the moste part of them.
1622. Bacon, Hen. VII., 9. It was conceiued not to bee an Epidemicke Disease, but to proceed from a malignitie in the constitution of the Aire.
1783. Cowper, Lett., 29 Sept. The epidemic fever … has prevailed much in this part of the kingdom.
1798. Malthus, Popul. (1817), II. 123. The endemic and epidemic diseases in Scotland fall chiefly, as is usual, on the poor.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (ed. 6), II. xii. 280. Reproductive parasitic life is at the root of epidemic disease.
fig. 1642. Vind. King, 5. The Epidemicke trouble of our age.
1703. Rowe, Fair Penit., V. i. 1921. Contagious Fury And Epidemick Madness.
1823. Scott, Peveril, xxxv. Influenced with … the epidemic terror of an imaginary danger.
1868. M. Pattison, Academ. Org., § 5. 133. The mania for prize scholarships, then epidemic, infected the curators.
¶ nonce-use. Affected with an epidemic.
1781. Cowper, Conversation, 391. We next enquire … Of epidemic throats.
† 2. In more extended sense: Wide-spread, widely prevalent, universal. Obs.
1643. Milton, Divorce, II. xiv. (1851), 97. A toleration of epidemick whordom.
1667. Waterhouse, Fire Lond., 110. That Epidemique mercy that he hath obliged all by.
a. 1745. Swift, Wks. (1841), II. 222. The trade of universal stealing is not so epidemic there as with us.
¶ 3. ? That is a product of a particular region; cf. EPICHORIAL. Obs.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 150. They haue Arack or Vsquebagh, distilled from Dates or Rice, both which are Epidemick in their mirth and Festiuals.
B. sb. An epidemic disease.
1799. Med. Jrnl., II. 468. He observed the variolous epidemic among a flock of sheep.
1861. Flor. Nightingale, Nursing, ii. 11. There are schools … where ‘children’s epidemics’ are unknown.
fig. 1757. Burke, Abridgm. Eng. Hist., II. ii. Wks. (1812), 267. An epidemick of despair.
1856. Sir B. Brodie, Psychol. Inq., I. i. 26. There are epidemics of opinion as well as of disease.
