infectious
adjective
Simple meaning
Capable of transmitting pathogens.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihnfehkshuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪnˈfɛkʃəs
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.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
pathologytypically of a person
Able to infect others; capable of transmitting pathogens.
pathologyof an illness
Caused by an agent that enters the host's body (such as a bacterium, virus, parasite, or prion); often, also, transmitted among hosts via any of various routes (for example, contact, droplet-borne, airborne, waterborne, foodborne, fomite-borne, or bloodborne).
of feelings and behaviour
Spreading quickly from one person to another.
informal
Memorable and invoking excitement or interest.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (pathology, typically of a person) Able to infect others; capable of transmitting pathogens.
Used this way, infectious is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- transmissible , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Able to be transmitted.
Easily transmitted to others.
Able to be transmitted between people or animals.
That infects or taints.
Containing or resulting from disease-causing organisms.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An acute but benign form of viral hepatitis caused by an RNA virus that does not persist in the blood serum and is usually transmitted by ingesting food or drink that is contaminated with…
An acute disease characterized by fever and swollen lymph nodes and an abnormal increase of mononuclear leucocytes or monocytes in the bloodstream.
A form of peripheral polyneuritis characterized by pain and weakness and sometimes paralysis of the limbs.
An agent capable of producing infection.
A disease transmitted only by a specific kind of contact.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- malarianoun
- syphilisnoun
- epidemiologynoun
- measlesnoun
- immunologynoun
- smallpoxnoun
- diarrheanoun
- influenzanoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: able to infect others
Antonyms
Sense: able to infect others
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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.