Today two words describing the same (fairly horrible) phenomenon.
And the problem?
Mice!
Millions of mice!
Regional communities in West Australia say the number of mice in their homes is unprecedented, with mice chewing through plastic containers, milk cartons and food containers.
CSIRO research officer Steve Henry, who has studied mouse numbers in paddocks from Geraldton to Esperance, said the figures are alarming.
Hence the use of these two words ‘plague’ and ‘scourge’ to label the little rodents over-running the place.
We haven’t heard much about this in the eastern stares, but for months, people in parts of Western Australia have been battling a ‘scourge’: swarms of mice that have taken over homes, businesses, and roads.
Experts say few predators and plentiful food sources resulted in the mouse ‘plague.’
The misery of life in these communities includes kitchens overrun with rodents, the sound of mice under car tires, mice in the ceilings and walls, and the constant smell of decaying mouse bodies.
‘Scourge’ has been part of English since around 1225.
These days it means ‘something causing misery, affliction, or death’, but when it first popped up (coming into English from Anglo-Norman French) it meant ‘whipping’ or ‘flogging.’
From this it came to be used figuratively to mean ‘a calamity’ (recorded in this sense from 1538).
And, as ABC news has reported, ‘Mouse numbers in Western Australia are already at plague proportions.’
The word ‘plague’ (recorded from around 1382) at first meant something like a blow, a wound or an affliction—again from a French source word.
And behind the French was a classical Latin word plāga meaning a stroke or wound.
Over the years this was extended to mean torture—and you can see how an epidemic of disease (or of mice!) could be seen as a slow, on-going torture—and, hence, as a ‘plague.’
Neither of them is a nice word, but then what is happening it not very nice either.
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