Black Death (plague epidemic of the mid-fourteenth century) · Metaphor for death, in particular an unusually bitter death.
köken: Calque from German schwarzer Tod (“black death”) or calque from Danish den sorte død (“the black death”) as a term for the plague epidemic, ultimately from a North Germanic language. See zwarte (“black”), dood (“death”).
köken: Probably from Latin cyma, from Ancient Greek κῦμα (kûma, “swell, wave, billow”). The meaning was probably derived from the swellings from diseases such as the bubonic plague. Compare also Aromanian ciumã (“peak, summit”), which has a meaning shared by most other Romance languages, and Albanian qime.
Literally, “Black Death”. The collocation as such is attested early on, but the specific use is believed to have originated in Scandinavia and is first attested in Swedish swarta dödhen (16th c.).