From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbubonic plaguebu‧bon‧ic plague /bjuːˌbɒnɪk ˈpleɪɡ $ buːˌbɑː-/ noun [uncountable] MIa very serious disease spread by rats, that killed a lot of people in the Middle Ages → Black Death
Examples from the Corpus
bubonic plague• Global incidences of cholera, tuberculosis, diphtheria and bubonic plague have all increased significantly in the last five years.• Elsewhere, typhus carried off many who had been weakened by starvation; in Chesterfield the pestilence was almost certainly bubonic plague.• The writer's po-faced style occasionally irritates: do people really need reminding that cases of bubonic plague should be treated immediately?• Later on, my nursing studies taught me it had been a form of bubonic plague.• Monservate was demolished after an outbreak of bubonic plague, an unusual fate for a station.• You know, the ones about the bubonic plague and all that.• Though relatively healthy animals, state health officials warn that they are notoriously susceptible to bubonic plague.• Thus, there seems little doubt that it was bubonic plague which struck Chesterfield in 1586-87.Origin bubonic plague (1800-1900) Medieval Latin bubo “swelling”, from Greek boubon “(swelling in) the groin” 