Vaccination
//ˌvæk.sɪˈneɪ.ʃən// noun
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Inoculation with a vaccine, in order to protect from a particular disease or strain of disease. countable, uncountable
"Near-synonym: immunization (broadly synonymous)"
- 2 taking a vaccine as a precaution against contracting a disease wordnet
- 3 the scar left following inoculation with a vaccine wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The vaccination left a funny little mark on my arm."
Etymology
From vaccinia, a cowpox infection. Ultimately from Latin vacca (“cow”). Coined by Edward Jenner (1749-1823) in 1798. Jenner infected people with weakened cowpox viruses (vaccinia), to immunise them against smallpox. It is now known that vaccinia and cow pox are separate conditions, but at the time of Jenner, they were considered the same condition.
Related phrases
More for "vaccination"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.