student asking question

What's the difference between "pandemic" and "plague"? Are they always interchangeable?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Usually when you hear the terms "the plague" or just "plague" (without "the" or "a"), it is being used to refer to an infectious disease caused by a bacterium spread from rats to humans by means of flea bites. This plague is often also called "the Black Death", and spread over Europe in the 1300s and killed about a quarter of the population. However, "plague" can also mean a widespread, epidemic disease that causes a high number of deaths. While the word "pandemic" can be used for a disease that has spread across an entire country or other large landmass, the word is generally reserved for diseases that have spread across continents or the entire world. So as you can see they are not interchangeable because, a word like plague generally involves a massive scale of death. Ex: The Corona-virus is a pandemic but it is not a plague. Ex: Half the population was killed due to a plague. Ex: The yearly flu pandemic has started.

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