Word.ws English Dictionary

second wave

second wave noun: a phenomenon that can develop during a pandemic where after a group recovers and infections appear to decrease, another group becomes infected and causes a recurrence in cases.

Noun

second wave (plural second waves)

  1. A phenomenon that can develop during a pandemic where after a group recovers and infections appear to decrease, another group becomes infected and causes a recurrence in cases.
    • Earlier this afternoon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield stated that a second wave of the coronavirus would be even “more difficult” than the original.2020 April 21, Sai Balasubramanian, “A Second Wave Of Coronavirus Is Likely Inevitable”, in Forbes
    • A second wave of Covid-19 now seems to be a racing certainty. And a gathering avalanche of numbers attests to an economic disaster that is probably already upon us.2020 July 19, John Harris, “Now Britain stands at the crossroads. Will we choose dread or hope?”, in The Guardian
  2. second-wave feminism
    • Understanding gender 'as a question rather than an answer', contextual, nonprescriptive and inherently intersectional, parafeminism sheds 'some of the closures and limitations' of the second wave […]2017, Alexandra M. Kokoli, The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice, page 61

Forms of second wave

pluralsecond waves

Questions about second wave

What does second wave mean?
Second wave means a phenomenon that can develop during a pandemic where after a group recovers and infections appear to decrease, another group becomes infected and causes a recurrence in cases.
What part of speech is second wave?
Second wave is a noun.
What is the plural of second wave?
The plural of second wave is second waves.

Words near second wave in the dictionary

  1. second violinist
  2. second violinists
  3. second violins
  4. second virginity
  5. Second War
  6. second wave
  7. second waves
  8. second wind
  9. second winds
  10. Second World
  11. Second World War

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: second wave (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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