Word.ws English Dictionary

bacillus

/bæˈsɪl.əs/

bacillus noun: any of various rod-shaped, spore-forming aerobic bacteria in the genus Bacillus, some of which cause disease.

bacillus: any of various rod-shaped, spore-forming aerobic bacteria in the genus Bacillus, some of which...
Image: Bob Blaylock, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bacillus (plural bacilli)

  1. Any of various rod-shaped, spore-forming aerobic bacteria in the genus Bacillus, some of which cause disease.
    • 'This again,' said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, 'is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera - the cholera germ.'1895, H. G. Wells, The Stolen Bacillus
    • "You will conceive a bunch of grapes," said he, "which are covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus.1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
  2. Any bacilliform (rod-shaped) bacterium.
  3. (broadly, figuratively) Something which spreads like bacterial infection.
    • The “bacillus of boom or depression,” he wrote, travels freely “from country to country.”1934 [2018], Gottfried Haberler quoted in Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 71

bacillus meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Gujarati

bacillus in Hindi

any bacteria in the genus Bacillus
बैसिलस baisilas, दण्डाणु daṇḍāṇu

bacillus in Tamil

கோலுருக்கிருமி, பசிலசு, கோலலுருக்கிருமி, நீளநுண்ணுயிர், குச்சி நுண்மம், கோல் நுண்மம்

bacillus in Malayalam

കീടാണു

bacillus in Gujarati

any bacteria in the genus Bacillus
દંડાણુ daṇḍāṇu
More languagesFewer languages
bacillus in Tagalog
habishay
bacillus in Arabic
عَصَوِيَّة ʕaṣawiyya
bacillus in Persian
باسیلوس bâsilus
bacillus in Thai
บาซิลลัส baasinlát
bacillus in Vietnamese
trực khuẩn
bacillus in Myanmar
ဗက်တီးရီးယားပိုး bakti:ri:ya:pui:

Examples of bacillus in a sentence

  • The typhoid bacillus and cholera bacterium are semiparasitic.
  • Fusobacteria are fusiform bacilli (spindled rods).
  • Ingestion of the bacillus results in intestinal infection and eventual bacillemia.

All 17 example sentences with bacillus

Forms of bacillus

pluralbacilli

Plural of bacillus: bacilli

Origin of bacillus

Learned borrowing from Latin bacillus (“little staff, wand”), diminutive of baculum (“stick, staff, walking stick”).

Words formed from bacillus

Questions about bacillus

What does bacillus mean?
Bacillus means any of various rod-shaped, spore-forming aerobic bacteria in the genus Bacillus, some of which cause disease.
What is bacillus in Hindi?
Bacillus in Hindi is बैसिलस (baisilas), दण्डाणु (daṇḍāṇu). See Bacillus meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is bacillus?
Bacillus is a noun.
How do you pronounce bacillus?
Bacillus is pronounced /bæˈsɪl.əs/.
What is the plural of bacillus?
The plural of bacillus is bacilli.

Words near bacillus in the dictionary

  1. bacilloscopist
  2. bacilloscopists
  3. bacilloscopy
  4. bacillosis
  5. bacilluria
  6. bacillus
  7. bacilosarcin
  8. bacilosarcins
  9. baciloscopic
  10. baciloscopist
  11. baciloscopy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bacillus (page history and authors); bacillus (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bacillus (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bacillus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bacillus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.