Contagiousness

noun

noun ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The state or condition of being contagious. uncountable

    "While people had no knowledge of modern germ theory in the year 1000, they were well aware of the contagiousness of diseases."

  2. 2
    The state or condition of being contagious, easily transmitted to others. wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
carriercontagiositycontagiosityepidemiologyinfectionmalignancy

Example

More examples

"Using data from the known cases of MERS, the researchers found that, on average, someone with the disease is likeliest to infect at most, only one other person. SARS patients were likely to infect three others. That level of contagiousness made it a pandemic."

Etymology

contagious + -ness

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