Definition of "rinderpest" [rin•der•pest]

• An acute, often fatal, contagious viral disease, chiefly of cattle, characterized by ulceration of the alimentary tract and resulting in diarrhea. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But while rinderpest is on the verge is being eradicated, PPR is on the verge of spreading across southern Africa."
• "Known as rinderpest, the disease came to Kenya and Tanzania when infected cattle were imported from the Horn of Africa around 1890."
• "Modern science explains the wasting away of savage men; it says that we have diseases which we can bear, though they cannot, and that they die away before them as our fatted and protected cattle died out before the rinderpest, which is innocuous, in comparison, to the hardy cattle of the"