Skip to content
HOW TO PRONOUNCE

pandemic

/pænˈdɛmɪk/

Press play to hear how to pronounce pandemic.

American Pronunciation Guide · 0:33
Watch on YouTube ↗

What does pandemic mean?

adjective

  1. Of a disease: epidemic over a wide geographical area and affecting a large proportion of the population; also, of or pertaining to a disease of this nature.

noun

  1. A pandemic disease; a disease that affects a wide geographical area and a large proportion of the population.
  2. The COVID-19 pandemic.
More meanings (3)

adjective

  1. Of Aphrodite Pandemos, the earthly aspect of the Greek goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart Venus, as contrasted with the heavenly aspect known as Aphrodite Urania: earthly, physical, sensual.
  2. (derogatory) General, widespread.
  3. (rare) Alternative letter-case form of Pandemic (“of Aphrodite Pandemos, the earthly aspect of the Greek goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart Venus, as contrasted with the heavenly aspect known as Aphrodite Urania: earthly, physical, sensual.”).

Definitions regrouped for readability · CC BY-SA 4.0

IPA pronunciation

/pænˈdɛmɪk/

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0

Pronunciation varies by speaker and region. About these dictionary pronunciations.

In the pages of books

See this word in context.

In the course of the succeeding half century this epidemic became pandemic and spread over all the inhabited earth.
George M. (George Milbrey) Gould; Walter L. (Walter Lytle) PyleAnomalies and Curiosities of MedicineProject Gutenberg ebook #747
The ancient peoples at any rate threw an illumination of religious (that is, of communal and public) value over sex-acts, and to a great extent made them into matters either of Temple-ritual and the worship of the gods, or of communal and pandemic celebration, as in the Saturnalia and other similar festivals.
Edward CarpenterPagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and MeaningProject Gutenberg ebook #1561
More book examples (1)
Cholera kills its thousands, plague, in its bad years, its hundreds of thousands, yellow fever, hookworm disease, pneumonia, tuberculosis, are all terribly destructive, some only in the tropics, others in more temperate regions: but malaria is today, as it ever was, a disease to which the word pandemic is specially applicable.
William, Sir OslerThe Evolution of Modern Medicine A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913Project Gutenberg ebook #1566