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infect
[ in-fekt ]
verb (used with object)
- to affect or contaminate (a person, organ, wound, etc.) with disease-producing germs.
- to affect with disease.
- to taint or contaminate with something that affects quality, character, or condition unfavorably:
to infect the air with poison gas.
- to corrupt or affect morally:
The news of the gold strike infected him with greed.
- to imbue with some pernicious belief, opinion, etc.
- to affect with a computer virus.
- to affect so as to influence feeling or action:
His courage infected the others.
- Law. to taint with illegality, or expose to penalty, forfeiture, etc.
verb (used without object)
- to become infected.
adjective
- Archaic. infected.
infect
/ ɪnˈfɛkt /
verb
- to cause infection in; contaminate (an organism, wound, etc) with pathogenic microorganisms
- also intr to affect or become affected with a communicable disease
- to taint, pollute, or contaminate
- to affect, esp adversely, as if by contagion
- computing to affect with a computer virus
- international law to taint with crime or illegality; expose to penalty or subject to forfeiture
adjective
- archaic.contaminated or polluted with or as if with a disease; infected
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Derived Forms
- inˈfector, noun
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Other Words From
- in·fectant adjective
- in·fected·ness noun
- in·fector in·fecter noun
- nonin·fected adjective
- nonin·fecting adjective
- prein·fect verb (used with object)
- rein·fect verb (used with object)
- unin·fected adjective
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Word History and Origins
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Word History and Origins
Origin of infect1
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Example Sentences
While the bats are infected, they shed large quantities of virus that can infect other animals.
Ebola Reston, it seemed, could infect humans, but never became symptomatic.
They had to infect the perfectly adequate data with the totally improbable idea of a 400-year-old heirloom elk antler tool.
But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy.
Have you wondered how the U.S. managed to infect Iranian computers?
A very light attack of any of these diseases in one child may infect another fatally.
One child coming down with scarlet fever, measles, or whooping cough can infect twenty others at an afternoon party.
Spores of parasitic fungi enter the cracks, germinate and infect the heartwood.
Because the milk doth grow sour in the stomach, where evil humours are bred, and infect the breath.
It was necessary to infect them in the mass so that as individuals they might infect others with the fever to buy bonds.
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