Crossword clues for blight
blight
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Blight \Blight\ (bl[imac]t), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Blighted; p. pr. & vb. n. Blighting.] [Perh. contr. from AS. bl[=i]cettan to glitter, fr. the same root as E. bleak. The meaning ``to blight'' comes in that case from to glitter, hence, to be white or pale, grow pale, make pale, bleach. Cf. Bleach, Bleak.]
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To affect with blight; to blast; to prevent the growth and fertility of.
[This vapor] blasts vegetables, blights corn and fruit, and is sometimes injurious even to man.
--Woodward. -
Hence: To destroy the happiness of; to ruin; to mar essentially; to frustrate; as, to blight one's prospects.
Seared in heart and lone and blighted.
--Byron.
Blight \Blight\, v. i. To be affected by blight; to blast; as, this vine never blights.
Blight \Blight\, n.
Mildew; decay; anything nipping or blasting; -- applied as a general name to various injuries or diseases of plants, causing the whole or a part to wither, whether occasioned by insects, fungi, or atmospheric influences.
The act of blighting, or the state of being blighted; a withering or mildewing, or a stoppage of growth in the whole or a part of a plant, etc.
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That which frustrates one's plans or withers one's hopes; that which impairs or destroys.
A blight seemed to have fallen over our fortunes.
--Disraeli. (Zo["o]l.) A downy species of aphis, or plant louse, destructive to fruit trees, infesting both the roots and branches; -- also applied to several other injurious insects.
pl. A rashlike eruption on the human skin. [U. S.]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1610s, origin obscure; according to OED it emerged into literary speech from the talk of gardeners and farmers, perhaps ultimately from Old English blæce, blæcðu, a scrofulous skin condition and/or from Old Norse blikna "become pale." Used in a general way of agricultural diseases, sometimes with suggestion of "invisible baleful influence;" hence figurative sense of "anything which withers hopes or prospects or checks prosperity" (1828). Compare slang blighter. Urban blight attested by 1935.
"afflict with blight," 1660s (implied in blighted), from blight (n.). Figurative use by 1712. Related: Blighted; blighting.
Wiktionary
n. 1 any of many plant diseases causing damage to, or the death of, leaf, fruit or other parts 2 the bacterium, virus or fungus that causes such a condition 3 (context by extension English) anything that impedes growth or development or spoils any other aspect of life vb. 1 (context transitive English) To affect with blight; to blast; to prevent the growth and fertility of. 2 (context intransitive English) To suffer blight. 3 (context transitive English) to spoil or ruin (something)
WordNet
n. a state or condition being blighted
any plant disease resulting in withering without rotting
v. cause to suffer a blight; "Too much rain may blight the garden with mold" [syn: plague]
Wikipedia
Blight is an American hardcore punk supergroup from Lansing, Michigan. Their members came from other Lansing hardcore groups.
Blight refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism. It is a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral organs. Accordingly, many diseases that primarily exhibit this symptom are called blights. Several notable examples are:
- Late blight of potato, caused by the water mold Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary, the disease which led to the Great Irish Famine
- Southern corn leaf blight, caused by the fungus Cochliobolus heterostrophus (Drechs.) Drechs, anamorph Bipolaris maydis (Nisikado & Miyake) Shoemaker, incited a severe loss of corn in the United States in 1970.
- Chestnut blight, caused by the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica (Murrill) Barr, has nearly completely eradicated mature American chestnuts in North America.
- Fire blight of pome fruits, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora (Burrill) Winslow et al., is the most severe disease of pear and also is found in apple and raspberry, among others.
- Bacterial leaf blight of rice, caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae (Uyeda & Ishiyama) Dowson.
- Early blight of potato and tomato, caused by species of the ubiquitous fungal genus Alternaria
- Leaf blight of the grasses
On leaf tissue, symptoms of blight are the initial appearance of lesions which rapidly engulf surrounding tissue. However, leaf spot may, in advanced stages, expand to kill entire areas of leaf tissue and thus exhibit blight symptoms.
Blights are often named after their causative agent, for example Colletotrichum blight is named after the fungi Colletotrichum capsici, and Phytophthora blight is named after the water mold Phytophthora parasitica.
Blight is a symptom affecting plants in response to infection.
Blight may also refer to:
- Blight (urban), abandoned, derelict, or severely neglected buildings and lots; slums
- Blight (surname)
- Blight (play), a play by Oliver St. John Gogarty
- Blight (band), a hardcore punk band from Lansing
- Urban Blight (band)
- Blight, a group of worlds devastated by a dangerous technology in the book Worlds of the Imperium
- The Blight, the malfunctioning terraforming microbes created by the Eden colony in the fictional Outpost 2 universe
- The Blight, a malevolent quasi-Power in the novel A Fire Upon the Deep
- Derek Powers or Blight, a supervillain in the Batman Beyond animated series
- Blight (comics), an alien race in the universe of DC Comics
- Dr. Blight, a villain in the animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers
- Blight (Transformers), a fictional character
Blight: The Tragedy of Dublin is a play by Oliver St. John Gogarty. One of the earliest Irish "slum dramas", it focuses on the horrific conditions prevalent in Dublin's tenements and the ineffectuality of the medical and charitable institutions set up to combat them. The message of the play reflects Gogarty's belief that only a complete overhaul of the Dublin housing system, coupled with a more effective campaign of preventive medicine, were capable of producing positive change.
Gogarty's friend Joseph O'Connor, though not involved in the actual writing process, contributed some anecdotal material to the play, and when it was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in December 1917, the name of the author was given as "Alpha and Omega", a joint pseudonym referring to Gogarty and O'Connor.
For the Batman Beyond supervillain of the same name, see: Derek Powers. The Blight are a fictional race in comic books published by DC Comics. They are techno-organic beings from the 30th Century whose bodies are composed of rotting flesh and technology. They searched galaxies in quest of immortality. Along the way they met a powerful race, known as the Doda, with the ability to teleport across galaxies.
In the "Legion of the Damned" story arc, the Legion of Super-Heroes comes across the Doda and the Blight, and destroys the Blights' teleportation device. Without this device, which uses stargate technology, the Blight are unable to teleport or spread their putrefaction across galaxies.
Blight is an English surname. Notable people with this surname include the following:
- David W. Blight (born 1949), American historian
- Digby Blight (born 1931), Former Director of Premier and Cabinet, Western Australia
- James Blight (born 1976), Canadian voice-actor
- John Blight (1913–1995), Australian poet of Cornish ancestry
- John Thomas Blight (1835–1911), Cornish archaeological artist
- Malcolm Blight (born 1950), former Australian rules footballer
- Rick Blight (1955–2005), Canadian hockey player
- Vicki Blight (born 1981), UK radio DJ
Usage examples of "blight".
Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.
The Japanese beetle, the citrous scale, the chestnut blight, and the elm borer spread to every corner of the world, and from one forgotten pesthole in Borneo, leprosy, long imagined extinct, reappeared.
Droops in the smile of the waning moon, When it scatters through an April night The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.
At the conclusion the goddess Dulness yawns, and a blight falls upon art, science, and philosophy.
I was looking with dread at the fearful havoc of old age upon a face which, before merciless time had blighted it, had evidently been handsome, but what amazed me was the childish effrontery with which this time-withered specimen of womankind was still waging war with the help of her blasted charms.
I spat on the kerb, knowing he was right, that there really i took them down to the Embankment where the old river ran pure silver under the uncloaked moon, its waters free of human detritus, driftwood and loose craft the only blight.
Arthur Lomb carried an enormous and bright blue backpack, an additional blight.
A certain dread which to-day I can no longer trace in my nature, a sort of terror of the consequences which might have a blighting influence upon my future, prevented me from giving myself up to complete enjoyment.
The ice bar and vodka luges are a huge success and the only blight on the whole evening is when Lady Boswell manages to get her arm stuck to an ice sculpture.
Thyza crops have been bountiful for three years, while the hwaet blight in the plains provinces has driven high the prices of all grain - thyza,, ryge, maza, even milat.
The unmagic had to be cleared from the room so Wulfric could get information about the killer, and so that she would not have the creeping sense that it might blight anyone who touched it.
Among the crocheted doilies of missionary artisanship and hammered copper plates representing idealized tribal maidens or trumpeting elephants that were African bourgeois taste, there hung in the dimness Edward Lear watercolours of Italy and Stubbs sporting prints swollen with humidity and spotted as blighted leaves.
On the sixth morning she left the village nestled in the northeast corner of Blighted Bay and started due east again toward the Brai River.
On the journey back, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell Merula and me what you have learned about this beggar and his blight.
Stories about the middle years also hinge on the discovery of blight in a mislived or unlived life, of love gone wrong, in any number of ways, of help refused when it might save a life, of pain passed on.