Pertussis

//pəˈtʌsɪs// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Whooping cough. countable, uncountable

    "With the introduction of an improved and standardized pertussis vaccine in the 1940s, there followed a remarkable decline in pertussis in the United States, most of the Western world, and Australia, New Zealand, and Japan."

  2. 2
    a disease of the respiratory mucous membrane wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
whooping coughagueanthraxblack deathcholeradiphtheria

Example

More examples

"On vaccines, the letter says 86 percent of the world's kids now have coverage for a basic package of vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, the highest percentage ever."

Etymology

From New Latin, from Latin per- (“thorough”) + tussis (“cough”).

Related phrases

whooping cough

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