Word.ws English Dictionary

infected

infected is the simple past and past participle of infect.

Meaning of infect

Verb

infect (third-person singular simple present infects, present participle infecting, simple past and past participle infected)

  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.
    • Not everyone will be infected when an epidemic strikes.
  2. (transitive) To contaminate (an object or substance) with a pathogen.
    Synonyms:
    leper
  3. (transitive) To make somebody enthusiastic about one's own passion, or to communicate a feeling to others, or a feeling communicating itself to others.
    • Her passion for dancing has infected me.
  4. (transitive) Of a computer virus: to insert its own code into (another executable file).

See all 6 meanings of infect

Adjective

infected (comparative more infected, superlative most infected)

  1. Having an infection.
    • The infected bodies were hastily piled up and burned.

Noun

infected (plural infecteds)

  1. One who has an infection.
    • I = the number of infecteds, the people who are currently sick2017, Deborah Hughes-Hallett, Andrew M. Gleason, Patti Frazer Lock, Applied Calculus, page 427
    • Some infecteds tried to pick their way through the debris, but shards of brick cut their bare feet.2019, Marcus Martin, Convulsive: The Complete Series

Forms of infected

Adjective
comparativemore infected
superlativemost infected
Noun
pluralinfecteds

Words formed from infected

Phrases with infected

Questions about infected

What does infected mean?
Infected means having an infection.
What is infected the simple past and past participle of?
Infected is the simple past and past participle of infect.
What part of speech is infected?
Infected can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near infected in the dictionary

  1. infectability
  2. infectable
  3. infectant
  4. infectants
  5. infecte
  6. infected
  7. infected abortion
  8. infected abortions
  9. infectedness
  10. infecteds
  11. infectee

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: infected (page history and authors); infect (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-infected.ogg.

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