Word.ws English Dictionary

virulent

Syllables: vi·ru·lent/ˈvɪɹ(j)ʊl(ə)nt/US/ˈvɪɹ(j)ələnt/

virulent adjective: of animals, plants, or substances: extremely venomous or poisonous.

Adjective

virulent (comparative more virulent, superlative most virulent)

  1. Of animals, plants, or substances: extremely venomous or poisonous.
  2. (figuratively) Extremely hostile or malicious; intensely acrimonious.
    • The politicians were virulent in their hatred of the president.
    • More venemous and much more virulent / Then any poyſoned tode, or any ſerpent.c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Againſt venemous tongues enpoyſoned with ſclaunder and falſe detractions &c.
  3. Of a disease or disease-causing agent: malignant, able to cause damage to the host.
    Antonyms:
    benign, nonvirulent
  4. Of a pathogen: replicating within its host cell, then immediately causing it to undergo lysis.

virulent meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

virulent in Tamil

நச்சுத்தன்மை மிகுந்த, நஞ்சார்ந்த, வீரியம் மிக்க, தீவிரம்

virulent in Urdu

مہلک, سخت زہریلا, سمی, زہررساں

virulent in Bengali

অত্যন্ত বিষাক্ত

virulent in Malayalam

രോഗവ്യാപകമായ, തീവ്രവിഷമുള്ള, കഠിനവിഷമുള്ള, അത്യുഗ്രമായ
More languagesFewer languages
virulent in Kannada
ನಂಜಿನ, ಕೊಲ್ಲಬಲ್ಲ, ಕಡುಹಗೆಯ, ಹರಡುವ

Examples of virulent in a sentence

  • There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.1963, Margery Allingham, “The Well House”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 105:
  • They were targeted by a virulent strain of nativism toward those from Southern and Eastern Europe that was largely about race.2025 December 15, Greg Sargent, Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State, The New Republic:

All 15 example sentences with virulent

Antonyms of virulent

Forms of virulent

comparativemore virulent
superlativemost virulent

Origin of virulent

PIE word *wisós From Middle English virulent (“leaking or seeping pus, purulent; (of putrefaction) extremely severe (sense uncertain)”) [and other forms], borrowed from Latin vīrulentus (“poisonous”), from vīrus (“poison; venom; slime, slimy liquid; stinking smell; nasty taste”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“poison; slime; fluidity”)) + -ulentus (suffix meaning ‘abounding in, full of’, forming adjectives). Sense 4 (“of a pathogen: replicating within its host cell, then immediately causing it to undergo lysis”) is derived from French virulent, which was first used in this sense by the French biologist François Jacob (1920–2013) and his co-authors in a 1953 article.

Words formed from virulent

Questions about virulent

What does virulent mean?
Virulent means of animals, plants, or substances: extremely venomous or poisonous.
What is virulent in Tamil?
Virulent in Tamil is நச்சுத்தன்மை மிகுந்த, நஞ்சார்ந்த, வீரியம் மிக்க. See Virulent meaning in Tamil.
How do you use virulent in a sentence?
There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.
What part of speech is virulent?
Virulent is an adjective.
How do you pronounce virulent?
Virulent is pronounced /ˈvɪɹ(j)ʊl(ə)nt/ (UK).

Words near virulent in the dictionary

  1. Viruets
  2. virulence
  3. virulences
  4. virulencies
  5. virulency
  6. virulent
  7. virulented
  8. virulently
  9. virulentness
  10. viruliferous
  11. viruliferousness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: virulent (page history and authors); virulent (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); virulent (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); virulent (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); virulent (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); virulent (Kannada 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-virulent.wav.

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