Gram-positive

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    That is stained violet by Gram's method not-comparable
  2. 2
    That stains dark blue or violet after Gram staining, due to large quantities of peptidoglycan in the cell wall. not-comparable

    "Generally, ionophore antibiotics are highly effective against Gram-positive bacteria but exhibit little or no activity against Gram-negative bacteria (Chen and Wolin, 1979; Watanabe et al., 1981)."

Adjective
  1. 1
    (of bacteria) being or relating to a bacterium that retains the violet stain used in Gram's method wordnet

Example

More examples

"Generally, ionophore antibiotics are highly effective against Gram-positive bacteria but exhibit little or no activity against Gram-negative bacteria (Chen and Wolin, 1979; Watanabe et al., 1981)."

Etymology

From Gram (“a surname”) + positive, after Danish bacteriologist Hans Christian Gram, who invented the Gram staining method.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.