Stay alert, infodemic, Black Death: the fascinating origins of pandemic terms - Inverse Stay alert, infodemic, Black Death: the fascinating origins of pandemic terms - Inverse Posted: 30 May 2020 08:21 PM PDT Language always tells a story. As COVID-19 shakes the world, many of the words we're using to describe it originated during earlier calamities – and have colorful tales behind them. In the Middle Ages, for example, fast-spreading infectious diseases were known as plagues – as in the Bubonic plague , named for the characteristic swellings (or buboes ) that appear in the groin or armpit. With its origins in the Latin word plaga meaning "stroke" or "wound", the plague came to refer to a wider scourge through its use to describe the ten plagues suffered by the Egyptians in the biblical book of Exodus . An alternative term, pestilence , derives from Latin pestis ("plague"), which is also the origin of