viruses

Noun

virus (countable and uncountable, plural viruses or (rare) virusses or (rare) vira or (proscribed) viri or (proscribed) virii or (rare, nonstandard) virus)

1. A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and that sometimes causes disease in the host organism (such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms).
   • Viruses are the smallest and most simplified forms of life.2001, Leslie Iversen, Drugs: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, page 64
   1. A species thereof.
      • Meronym: virion (individual particle)
   2. (occasionally proscribed) An individual particle thereof: synonym of virion.
      • Under electron microscopy, a few viruses were seen floating near the cells.
2. (uncountable) A quantity of such infectious agents, considered en masse.
   • Not much virus was detectable on a nucleic acid test; the viral load was very low.
3. (informal, metonymically) A disease caused by such an infectious agent; a viral illness.
   • He's got a virus and had to stay home from school.
4. (archaic) Venom, as produced by a poisonous animal etc.
   • Brazil, that inferno where every budding flower and every buzzing bluebottle fly bears a lascivious virus.1890, Aluísio Azevedo, The Slum

See all 10 meanings of virus