Definition of blight in English:

blight

noun

mass noun

1A plant disease, typically one caused by fungi such as mildews, rusts, and smuts.
‘the vines suffered blight and disease’
‘potato blight’
- ‘Corn seed is generally treated with fungicides to prevent seed decays and seedling blights.’
- ‘We have lost too many champions to Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight, and oak wilt.’
- ‘Then in 1845 the harvest was wrecked by bad weather, and the first blights hit the Irish potato crop.’
- ‘Approved for use on stone fruits and almonds to control brown rot, blossom and twig blight, and fruit brown rot.’
- ‘The major soybean diseases can be classified as root rots, stem rots, leaf blights, and seed diseases.’
- ‘Infections that cause seedling blights occur after the seed has germinated but before or just after emergence.’
- ‘The seed can be planted, provided it is treated with a fungicide that will control seedling blights.’
- ‘Corn smut, leaf blights, stalk and ear rots, and virus diseases are not controlled by seed treatment fungicides.’
- ‘Common onion diseases include damping off, botrytis leaf blight, downy mildew, and bacterial blight.’
- ‘Many different seed treatment materials will effectively prevent losses from Pythium seed rot and seedling blights.’
- ‘The major corn diseases can be grouped into four categories: leaf blights, stalk rots, ear rots, and viral diseases.’
- ‘The blight is actually a fungus called rhytisma acerinum and has infected trees all the way from Ottawa to Barrie to Windsor in the past several years.’
- ‘Disease problems can include powdery mildew, Botrytis blight, aster yellows, leaf spots, viruses and foliar nematodes.’
- ‘Botrytis blight, a fungal disease, causes reddish-brown leaf spots and is often the result of damp weather and/or evening watering.’
- ‘As with other small fruits, Botrytis primarily affects ripening fruit, although under certain circumstances the fungus can cause stem blight as well.’
- ‘The resulting monocultured crops are genetically limited and far more susceptible to insects, blights, diseases, and bad weather than are diverse crops.’
- ‘Biological stress includes insects, viruses, wilts and blights, nematodes, diseases, susceptible varieties, grass types and animals.’
- ‘Although not mentioned on the label, Benlate should also provide some level of control for anthracnose, cane blight, Septoria leaf spot, and raspberry leaf spot.’
- ‘They devote an entire chapter to analyzing the problems associated with Jalisco's single-crop agriculture, which have led to devastating agave blights.’
- ‘And, when a hardy variety of yam was introduced experimentally to Europe, to relieve the distress caused by the potato blights of the 1840s, it was grown successfully enough but failed to become popular.’
disease, canker, infestation, fungus, mildew, mould, rot, decay
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2A thing that spoils or damages something.
‘the vacant properties are a blight on the neighbourhood’
‘her remorse could be a blight on that happiness’
- ‘Fascism is a gross deformity on the once awe inspiringly superlative face of this earth, and such blights so easily make otherwise beautiful spectacles the ugliest of things.’
- ‘He has been credited with turning the country around after several severe economic blights and in recent years for spearheading the introduction of policies to boost the country's economic competitiveness.’
- ‘Nowadays, anyone with access to graphics software can readily modify digital images to remove such blights as red eye in flash photos or transport themselves from a crowded room to a pristine beach.’
- ‘In the next two decades, there will take place a total discrediting of these monstrous blights on the economic stability and prosperity of our civilization.’
- ‘From the house, the sea can just be glimpsed through a chink at the end of the valley, but its secluded location means no traffic noise and no views of cranes and advertising hoardings, the blights of the Costa.’
- ‘There are other irritating blights of the Internet age, like spam.’
- ‘The video quality is very good, with no detracting edge enhancement or digital blights.’
- ‘It was previously believed world-wide that those suffering from these more mysterious blights of the mind were possessed by the devil or a demon counterpart.’
- ‘Most of the anachronistic blights on the conscience of humanity like bear baiting, cock fighting, dog fighting have long been illegal.’
- ‘Carlyle and Heworth have struggled this season with injury blights having a major impact on performance and significantly reducing numbers to the extent that the ‘A’ team was almost axed last month.’
- ‘There's David Childs, whom Filler credits with having created ‘some of the worst blights on the city's skyline in recent decades’.’
- ‘The request came at the half-way point in Manchester's pioneering campaign to rid itself of litter, graffiti and other environmental blights in just 100 days.’
- ‘It is clear the politicians and health experts are struggling to find a strategy for coping with what is one of the great blights of modern life.’
- ‘However, South Africa sees mercenaries as one of the blights on Africa.’
- ‘The whispers have been there for a while, that the Montreal Expos, who for a three-game series in September drew only 8,817 fans in total, and one of the Florida teams were financial disasters, blights on the game.’
- ‘The Redskins and Orioles have been ruined by the blights of modern sports: unsentimentality, overreliance on free agents, and obnoxious rich owners.’
- ‘She refers to Aviemore as a diseased blight whose continuing existence diminishes Scotland.’
- ‘Other than an awareness of the blight at school headquarters, there is no evidence that these businessmen/reformers have a clue about what is really wrong with schooling.’
- ‘This city of sinners has been a blight upon the land for too long.’
affliction, scourge, bane, curse, plague, menace, evil, misfortune, woe, calamity, trouble, ordeal, thorn in one's flesh, thorn in one's side, trial, tribulation, visitation, nuisance, pest, pollution, contamination, cancer, canker
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1. 2.1mass noun An ugly, neglected, or rundown condition of an urban area.
  ‘the city's high-rise social housing had become synonymous with urban blight’
  ‘Pompeii is an hour's drive away: up over the Chiunzi pass, down through the urban blight of the Sarno plain, and there it is, the world's most famous stopped clock.’
  ‘A leafy neighbourhood of detached and semi-detached homes much removed from the urban blight of Scottish cities.’
  ‘Urban blight is cumulative and self-reinforcing; blighted buildings cast a pall on land around them, discourage upkeep, and stifle renewal.’
  ‘A council spokesman said: ‘This is an area that was a blight on the landscape.’’
  ‘The setting becomes an urban blight.’
  ‘The Harlem of 1921 was already an urban blight, although only a few years separated these once fine homes from the mansions and townhouses of upper crust New York in those days.’
  ‘The spray-painted art was considered an urban blight by New York officials, who persecuted the young artists who created it.’
  ‘However, the figures are still dwarfed by the huge scale of the problem of urban dereliction and blight in the area.’
  ‘Instead, it declined precipitously, becoming by the 1990s one of the country's poorest cities and a national symbol of urban blight.’
  ‘Urban blight and flight is transformed into bustle, bounty, and bidding wars.’
  ‘The barren South Bronx neighborhood that Ronald Reagan visited in 1980 to illustrate urban blight is now a thriving area, with, inevitably, a Starbucks.’
  ‘The result is that intercultural and intergroup dialogue is always difficult, and widespread misunderstanding adds to the blight of the overall area.’
  ‘Glasgow's high-rise social housing had become synonymous with urban blight and social deprivation.’
  ‘Sullum makes a good case that urban blight should instead be addressed under the government's police power, which includes the authority to force property owners to eliminate nuisances.’
  ‘I was enchanted with Troy when I was growing up, but as an adult I thought I wanted no part of urban blight - until I realized that I couldn't afford the country.’
  ‘Even then, local governments didn't have carte blanche; they had to justify the taking as a way to mitigate ‘urban blight.’’
  ‘I feel duty bound to respond to the marchers who trooped through the capital the other day, bringing the wonderful sights and sounds, and the less wonderful smells, of the country to my patch of urban blight yesterday.’
  ‘On a street pocked with dark storefronts, and in a neighborhood with its share of urban blight, the Beachland's neon sign is a beacon.’
  ‘But Pine-Parc was only one of several blights to hit the Milton-Parc neighbourhood (now better known as the McGill ghetto).’
  ‘The rubbish has been accumulating at the site over the past few weeks and now has grown into dreadful blights on the roadside.’

verb

[with object]

1Have a severely detrimental effect on.
‘the scandal blighted the careers of several leading politicians’
‘the problems are most acutely felt in areas blighted by poverty’
‘some people complain that wind farms blight the landscape’
- ‘For returning officers across East Lancashire, one of the primary goals of next month's national and county council elections is to restore faith in a process blighted by scandal in recent years.’
- ‘But Dudgeon's career at Oakwell was blighted by a bout of post-viral syndrome which prevented him from making a League appearance for the Tykes.’
- ‘Tomorrow, we will destroy the evil blighting our land!’
- ‘Has cloning destroyed cities or blighted the lives of millions?’
- ‘Panorama's allegations of corruption in horse racing are just another twist in a long line of scandals which have blighted the sport.’
- ‘Klee was one of the many acclaimed modernist painters whose career was blighted by Nazi disapproval.’
- ‘The former Italy striker, known as ‘The Divine Ponytail’ due to his hairstyle and Buddhist beliefs, has had a career blighted by injury.’
- ‘Bruce Willis has revealed he had to see a therapist when he was younger - to help overcome a speech impediment that could have blighted his acting career..’
- ‘Your academic career is blighted, your good name is tarnished, you may find it hard to secure a place at any decent establishment elsewhere.’
- ‘In 1934 Braddock's once successful boxing career was blighted by broken hands.’
- ‘The people who are dumping waste on the roadsides are blighting the countryside and destroying the good image that the vast majority of people try to promote.’
- ‘His father's life was blighted by trauma he'd suffered during military service in the Second World War.’
- ‘Political bias - raw and wicked - blights American newspapers and TV news.’
- ‘Age discrimination leads to erosion of talent, and blights employment opportunities for young and old alike, yet many companies continue to discard valuable knowledge and skills on the basis of age.’
- ‘The mind-numbing natural disaster which has killed thousands and blighted the lives of millions in South Asia will not fade from our consciousness for some time yet.’
- ‘Of this quintet of great Old Firm hopefuls, only Ross has made a starting appearance in a derby, and if this changes today it may be down to selection problems blighting both clubs more than anything else.’
- ‘After another blast of the wretched conditions that have blighted this season's major championships, a motley crew of contenders have lined up at Hazeltine to exploit the uncertainty.’
- ‘Police and trading standards officers will tackle alcohol-related violence which blights town centres in North Yorkshire Police's eastern division, which covers Scarborough and Ryedale.’
- ‘She rarely strays down the path of ponderous self-importance that often blights this genre.’
- ‘She confesses to being ‘a complete geek’ as a teenager, her red hair blighting her chances of blending into the woodwork each time she started a new school.’
ruin, wreck, spoil, disrupt, undo, mar, play havoc with, make a mess of, put an end to, end, bring to an end, put a stop to, prevent, frustrate, crush, quell, quash, dash, destroy, scotch, shatter, devastate, demolish, sabotage
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2Infect (plants) with blight.
‘a peach tree blighted by leaf curl’
- ‘Only when their crop of vines is blighted can they make Sauternes, one of the most glorious sweet wines in the world, which thrives on rot and fungal decay.’
- ‘If there were witches, who could blight your crops, make you sterile, and turn you into a newt just by an incantation or two, then of course we should hunt them.’
- ‘She could blight crops as easily as bless them, deliver at a difficult lambing and assist the occasional human birth for those too poor to have a more qualified attendant.’
- ‘Occasionally they would take to the air to kill people with their knifelike talons and blight the crops with poisonous excrement.’
- ‘Rice prices are soaring because drought has blighted the Basmati crop.’
- ‘Entire ferns may be blighted by late summer in a wet year.’
- ‘The canola crop, is blighted; there is a physical presence.’
- ‘Earlier in the year, there were signs that maybe there was a recovery, but further losses of confidence around US accounting scandals have blighted the green shoots.’
infect, wither, shrivel, blast, mildew, nip in the bud, kill, destroy
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