Bacteriophage

//bækˈtɪəɹ.ɪəʊˌfeɪd͡ʒ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A virus that specifically infects bacteria.

    "Another possibility is to enlist a bacteriophage, a kind of virus, to hunt down and kill harmful bacteria for us."

  2. 2
    a virus that is parasitic (reproduces itself) in bacteria wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
phagebacteriovirusphage

Example

More examples

"Another possibility is to enlist a bacteriophage, a kind of virus, to hunt down and kill harmful bacteria for us."

Etymology

Borrowed from French bactériophage, coined by microbiologist Félix d'Hérelle, from bacterio- (“bacteria”) + -phage (“eater”).

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