Fomite

//ˈfoʊmaɪt// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An inanimate object capable of carrying infectious agents (such as bacteria, viruses or prions), and thus passively enabling their transmission between hosts; common examples include towels, dishcloths, kitchenware/flatware, and laundry.

    "This must be an efficacious fomite of cutaneous and pectoral disease."

  2. 2
    any inanimate object (as a towel or money or clothing or dishes or books or toys etc.) that can transmit infectious agents from one person to another wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
fomesvehicle

Example

More examples

"This must be an efficacious fomite of cutaneous and pectoral disease."

Etymology

A back-formation from fomites, plural of fomes, a borrowing of medical Latin fōmes (“tinder, kindling”), used figuratively to evoke the analogy of a spreading infection to a spreading fire.

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