be at the plague
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English
[edit]Verb
[edit]be at the plague (third-person singular simple present is at the plague, present participle being at the plague, simple past was at the plague, past participle been at the plague)
- (obsolete, idiomatic) To be bothered; to make the effort to do something.
- 1748, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random:
- 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.
- 1818 July 25, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Company, →OCLC:
- 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.