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infect

verb

Simple meaning

To bring into contact with a substance that causes illness, so that the pathogen begins to act on the body.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ihnfehkt

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɪnˈfɛkt

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. transitive

    To bring (the body or part of it) into contact with a substance that causes illness (a pathogen), so that the pathogen begins to act on the body; (of a pathogen) to come into contact with (a body or body part) and begin to act on it.

  2. Contaminate with a disease or microorganism

  3. transitive

    To contaminate (an object or substance) with a pathogen.

  4. transitive

    To make somebody enthusiastic about one's own passion, or to communicate a feeling to others, or a feeling communicating itself to others.

  5. Communicate a disease to

    “Your children have infected you with this head cold.”

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C1 · Advanced
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: To bring (the body or part of it) into contact with a substance that causes illness (a pathogen), so that the pathogen begins to act on the body; (of a pathogen) to come into contact with (a body or body part) and begin to act on it.

Used this way, infect is a reasonably familiar word with a faintly unfavourable edge. It turns up most in medicine or healthcare contexts.

Emotional tone
Slightly negative
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Critical or judgemental
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Medicine/healthcare

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use infect

  • “Your children have infected you with this head cold.”verb
  • “His laughter infects everyone who is in the same room.”verb

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

infect disinfect controlinfect humansviruses infect

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • infectedadjectiveInflected form

    Containing or resulting from disease-causing organisms.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • risk of infectionnounRelated term

    The probability of becoming infected given that exposure to an infectious agent has occurred.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Antonyms

Sense: to bring (the body

disinfect

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.