Monkeypox

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A disease of the skin of rodents and primates, including humans, caused by virus of species Orthopoxvirus monkeypox. uncountable

    "In a remote southwestern pocket of the Central African Republic, doctor Patrick Karume and his small team are on the jungle frontline to quarantine a rare outbreak of monkeypox."

Synonyms

All synonyms
mpox

Example

More examples

"I wonder what the next pandemic will be after monkeypox. We'll surely get something."

Etymology

From monkey + pox; originally so named based on cases in monkeys, although the name was a misnomer because monkeys are less of a reservoir for the disease than other animals are. More at Wikipedia (mpox ยง Nomenclature).

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