infective
/ɪnˈfɛktɪv/
infective adjective: able to cause infection; infectious.
Adjective
infective (comparative more infective, superlative most infective)
- Able to cause infection; infectious
- Hirsch has followed a group of 85 health care workers who were exposed to blood and bodily fluids of persons with AIDS. Thirty had been exposed by accidentally sticking themselves with needles containing blood and three had been spattered or had an open wound exposed to potentially infective blood.1984 December 29, Christine Guilfoy, “Health Worker's AIDS Prompts Investigation”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 25, page 2
Noun
infective (plural infectives)
- A person who is capable of spreading a disease by infecting others.
- It is evident that the greater the number of susceptibles, then the greater the increase in the number of infectives.2002, Belinda Barnes, Glenn Fulford, Mathematical Modeling with Case Studies, →ISBN, page 140
infective meaning in Tamil and Urdu
infective in Tamil
- தொற்று, தொற்றும் பண்பு
infective in Urdu
- لگنے والی بیماری, متعدی, وبائی
Forms of infective
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more infective |
| superlative | most infective |
| Noun | |
| plural | infectives |
Origin of infective
From infect + -ive.
Words formed from infective
Words that rhyme with infective
- projective
- subjective
- effective
- objective
- prospective
- reflective
- collective
- connective
- defective
- directive
- respective
- selective
28 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- injective
- detective
- elective
- irrespective
- perfective
- retrospective
- affective
- bijective
- corrective
- erective
- ineffective
- inflective
- intellective
- intersubjective
- protective
- refective
- advective
- convective
- deflective
- ejective
- imperfective
- inspective
- introspective
- overprotective
- rejective
- surjective
- unreflective
- unselective
Questions about infective
- What does infective mean?
- Infective means able to cause infection; infectious.
- What is infective in Tamil?
- Infective in Tamil is தொற்று, தொற்றும் பண்பு. See Infective meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is infective?
- Infective can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce infective?
- Infective is pronounced /ɪnˈfɛktɪv/.
Words near infective in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: infective (page history and authors); infective (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); infective (Urdu 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-infective.wav.
Cite this entry: “infective.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/infective. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.