Definition of "pesthole" []

• A place that is considered a breeding ground for epidemic disease. (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.

• "Panama had been known as a pesthole since the earliest Spanish settlement."
• "The pesthole could be a proving ground, an opportunity to succeed gloriously, for all the world to see, where a less industrious, less manly, and less virtuous people had failed so ignominiously."
• "In fact, remind me again why we ever acquired this uncivilized pesthole of a state in the first place."