infect
/ɪnˈfɛkt
/verb [with object]
1Affect (a person, organism, etc.) with a disease-causing organism: the chance that a child may have been infected with HIV...
- Children can get ringworm from touching infected animals such as dogs and cats.
- Since then, West Nile virus has spread rapidly westward, infecting birds, humans and horses.
- Mosquitoes that bite infected animals then bite humans typically transmit the disease.
Synonyms
pass infection to, transmit infection to, spread disease to, contaminate;
cause infection in, cause disease in
1.1Contaminate (air, water, etc.) with harmful organisms: (as adjective infected) the bacteria can get into a crop from an infected water supply...
- Somewhat reassured, the group try to settle down to enjoy the rest of their vacation, unaware that the diseased man's body is face down in the reservoir, infecting their water supply…
- Oh, and the guy who they burnt handily made it to the local reservoir, thereby infecting the local water supply.
- Almost every area of life is a potential terrorist target - with scare stories about the threat of a smallpox outbreak, and bioterrorists infecting food supplies and water reservoirs.
Synonyms
contaminate, pollute, make impure, taint, foul, dirty, blight, spoil, mar, impair, damage, ruin;
poison, radioactivate
rare vitiate
1.2 Computing Affect with a virus: viruses have infected computer networks...
- By comparison almost one in ten emails (nine per cent) sent out in July were infected with a computer virus.
- They also found many of these airport lounge PCs were infected with computer viruses.
- Antivirus software can only protect your computer from viruses trying to infect it via email, CD-Rom, floppy disk, Word documents or other types of computer files.
1.3(Of a negative feeling or idea) take hold of or be communicated to (someone): the panic in his voice infected her...
- He is out to remove the spectator from his normal or appropriate perceptual field, and in doing so to infect him with his own personal doubts.
- It's a tendency that infects anybody that mistakes the Faith for an ideology (of which, more later).
- The house was big, not as big as the one that had just infected her with a bad case of money envy, but still big.
Synonyms
affect, have an effect on, influence, have an impact on, impact on, touch, take hold of;
excite, inspire, stimulate, animate
Derivatives
infector
/ noun ...- Retroviruses are particularly insidious infectors as they use the inner ‘factory’ of the host cells to reproduce themselves, killing the host and spreading throughout the body.
- File infectors are parasitic viruses that operate in memory.
- We examine three state-of-the-art, system infectors and try to determine what's right for your agenda.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin infect- 'tainted', from the verb inficere, from in- 'into' + facere 'put, do'.
The words infect and infection (Late Middle English) are both from Latin inficere ‘to taint, dip in’, from in- ‘into’ and facere ‘put, do’.