Word.ws English Dictionary

kissing disease

kissing disease noun: mononucleosis.

Noun

the kissing disease (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial) Mononucleosis.
    • It was in a college, West Point, that infectious mononucleosis won a romantic reputation. . . . Investigators at a girls' school also found post-vacation peaks, and mono became known as the "kissing disease".1961 February, “What in the world is Mononucleosis?”, in Kiplinger Magazine, retrieved 19 Oct 2010, page 30

Origin of kissing disease

So called because it may be transmitted through kissing.

Questions about kissing disease

What does kissing disease mean?
Kissing disease means mononucleosis.
What part of speech is kissing disease?
Kissing disease is a noun.

Words near kissing disease in the dictionary

  1. kissing comfits
  2. kissing cousin
  3. kissing cousins
  4. kissing dance
  5. kissing dances
  6. kissing disease
  7. kissing gate
  8. kissing gates
  9. kissing goes by favor
  10. kissing goodbye
  11. kissing gourami

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kissing disease (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: “kissing disease.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kissing_disease. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.