Microbial

//maɪˈkɹoʊ.bi.əl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A microbe or bacterium.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of, relating to, or caused by microbes or microorganisms. not-comparable

    "The close analogies between DNA-containing eukaryotic cell organelles and microbial symbionts require revision of classic cell theory, wrote Scwemmler and Schenk (1980) on introducing the field of endocytobiology."

  2. 2
    Small; tiny; minuscule. not-comparable

    "As I say, one must not blame the Christians too much for all this - partly because, after the communal periods which I have just mentioned, Christianity was evidently deeply influenced by the rise of Commercialism to which during the last two centuries it has so carefully and piously adapted itself; and partly because - if our view is anywhere near right - this microbial injection of self-consciousness was just the necessary work which (in conjunction with commercialism) it had to perform."

Adjective
  1. 1
    of or involving or caused by or being microbes wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
microbicmicrobiousmicrobous

Example

More examples

"The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life."

Etymology

From microbe + -ial.

Related phrases

microbial clockmicrobial fuel cell

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