Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
be at the plague en · VERB
Meanings
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(idiomatic, obsolete) To be bothered; to make the effort to do something.
One of a hundred a year, or so, is all I wish:—I would not be at the plague of paying land-tax for a larger.
1748, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random:I am a man of few word but I am laird at hame, as weel as in the field; deil a brute or body about my house but I can manage when I like, except Rory Bean, my powny; but I can seldom be at the plague, an it binna when my bluid's up.
1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Company, →OCLC:
Forms