potato blight
- noun
- /pəˈteɪtoʊ blaɪt/
:
maldición de la patata
- This one's set in 1846 as potato blight is forcing more than a million starving Irish to consider emigration to the Americas, and is performed in gathering darkness, which seems kind of cruel as the marathon enters its eighth hour.
Examples
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A second point to emphasize is the prediction that our model makes about the negative technological shock in the bread sector in Ireland due to the potato blight that led to a famine in the mid-1800s (sometimes known as the Great Famine).
Academic text (2018) -
The farmers were devastated by the potato blight, which destroyed their entire crop this season.
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And 150 years later, potato blight is still affecting Deahl's life.
Academic text (1994) -
In our model, the potato blight is a negative technology shock to B: it lowered the amount of food that could be produced with a given amount of labor and land.
Academic text (2018) -
Besides the failed wheat crop and a growing potato blight, the village was also touched by cholera.
Fiction book (1997) -
Harvest failures and potato blight make a bad situation worse, with a deadly famine in Ireland and food riots across France.
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PHOTO (COLOR): A germinating spore of the fungus that causes late potato blight.
Academic text (1994) -
Ken Deahl inherited his blue eyes from his Irish great-great-grandfather, who was forced from Ireland by the famine caused by the 1840s potato blight.
Academic text (1994) -
It was DNA fingerprinting that allowed Cornell scientists to determine that most of the old population of potato blight in the United States and in other countries besides Mexico was caused by a single strain of P. infestans," Tooley says.
Academic text (1994) -
After the potato blight affected the fields, many families struggled to find food.
Synonyms
7
7.3
A plant disease that makes leaves and stems die without rotting
A disease that kills potato plants and ruins crops
A disease caused by a fungus that makes potatoes rot in fields
A serious plant disease that attacks potatoes and tomatoes late in the growing season
A plant disease that makes potato leaves and potatoes rot
How Damaging
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'blight' denotes a plant disease and 'potato' specifies the affected host, so 'potato blight' straightforwardly means a disease that affects potatoes. This noun–noun combination follows common compounding patterns found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the overall meaning without prior exposure to the specific disease.
Etymology
The noun potato blight links potato, the vegetable, and blight, a disease that makes plants rot. It paints a clear image of whole potato fields turning brown and the potatoes in the ground rotting, so it means 'a serious disease that destroys potato crops'.