Word.ws English Dictionary

picornavirus

/pɪˈkɔɹnəˌvaɪɹəs/

picornavirus noun: any of the family Picornaviridae of RNA viruses, many of which are pathogenic, causing diseases such as polio, foot-and-mouth disease, and many varieties of the common cold.

picornavirus: any of the family Picornaviridae of RNA viruses, many of which are pathogenic, causing diseases...
Image: Cynthia S. Goldsmith and Yiting Zhang, CDC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

picornavirus (plural picornaviruses)

  1. Any of the family Picornaviridae of RNA viruses, many of which are pathogenic, causing diseases such as polio, foot-and-mouth disease, and many varieties of the common cold.
    • Historically, interest in virology developed because these tiny microbes caused significant human and veterinary disease. One picornavirus, foot-and-mouth disease virus, was the first animal disease virus discovered; it was identified by Friedrich Loeffler and Paul Frosch in 1898 as a filterable...2010, Ellie Ehrenfeld et al., The Picornaviruses, American Society for Microbiology Press, →ISBN

Forms of picornavirus

pluralpicornaviruses

Origin of picornavirus

The name "picornavirus" has a dual etymology. Firstly, the name derives from picorna- which is an acronym for "poliovirus, insensitivity to ether, coxsackievirus, orphan virus, rhinovirus, and ribonucleic acid". Secondly, the name derives from pico-, which designates a very small unit of measurement (equivalent to 10⁻¹²), combined with rna to describe this group of very small RNA viruses.; pico- + RNA + virus

Words formed from picornavirus

Questions about picornavirus

What does picornavirus mean?
Picornavirus means any of the family Picornaviridae of RNA viruses, many of which are pathogenic, causing diseases such as polio, foot-and-mouth disease, and many varieties of the common cold.
What part of speech is picornavirus?
Picornavirus is a noun.
How do you pronounce picornavirus?
Picornavirus is pronounced /pɪˈkɔɹnəˌvaɪɹəs/.
What is the plural of picornavirus?
The plural of picornavirus is picornaviruses.

Words near picornavirus in the dictionary

  1. picoradians
  2. picornaviral
  3. picornavirologist
  4. picornavirologists
  5. picornavirology
  6. picornavirus
  7. picornaviruses
  8. Picos
  9. Picos de Europa
  10. picosat
  11. picosatellite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: picornavirus (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:

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