a. and sb. [ad. Fr. épizootique, f. épizootie: see next. In sense 2 taken as f. ἐπί (with interpretation ‘subsequent to’) + ζῷον animal.]

1

  1.  of diseases: Temporarily prevalent among animals; opposed to enzootic. Cf. EPIDEMIC.

2

1865.  Reader, 12 Aug., 178/3. A new epizootic disease has broken out among the horned cattle.

3

1880.  Times, 15 Sept., 7/6. Epizootic pleuro-pneumonia.

4

  † 2.  Geol. Used by Kirwan as an epithet of ‘secondary’ mountains, to denote ‘their posteriority to the existence of organized substances.’

5

1799.  Kirwan, Geol. Ess., 161.

6

1840.  Humble, Dict. Geol. & Min., Epizootic, containing animal remains, as epizootic hills, or epizootic strata.

7

  B.  sb. An epizootic disease; a plague among cattle.

8

1748.  Short, in Chambers, Dom. Ann. Scotl., II. 437, note. This epizootic raged also in England and other countries.

9

1827.  De Quincey, Last Days Kant, Wks. III. 124. Cats being so eminently an electric animal … he attributed this epizootic to electricity.

10

1882.  Jrnl. Linn. Soc., XVI. 187. All epizootics of this character are immediately due to excessive multiplication of worms.

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