peste

Peste is a term with several meanings across different languages and contexts, and it can also appear as part of place names or proper nouns in some regions. In French, peste means plague, a usage that appears in historical and literary contexts. The phrase La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus is a well-known example, referring to a deadly outbreak and its human and philosophical implications.

In Portuguese and Spanish, peste similarly denotes plague or pest, and the word appears in medical, historical, and literary contexts. These languages use peste to refer to a contagious disease or to pestilence in general.

In Romanian, peste is a preposition meaning over, above, or more than. It is used with numbers and time expressions to indicate approximate or exceeded quantities, for example peste 100 oameni means over 100 people, and peste trei zile means in more than three days. The term can also convey a sense of excess when describing ranges or timelines.

The word can also function as a geographic or personal name in various regions, where its usage depends on local language and orthography. Because of its presence in multiple languages with distinct meanings, peste commonly appears in linguistics, translation, and cross-cultural discussions.

Overall, peste highlights how a single term can traverse languages with related but divergent meanings—plague in some Romance languages, and a spatial or quantitative preposition in Romanian.