adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
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"I am much inclined to the vaccine. My friend, Mr. L—, has had all his children vaccined, and I just wait to see the effect."
"My dog has had two vaccines this year."
"[S]ince you have decided that the boy shall be vaccined, let us send directly for the surgeon and have it done, and then he will be safe."
"I will call upon them: they are healthy children, we can have the vaccine infection from them, and I will inoculate the boy myself."
"[M]y play could not have been written but for the work done by Sir Almroth Wright in the theory and practice of securing immunization from bacterial diseases by the inoculation of "vaccines" made of their own bacteria: a practice incorrectly called vaccinetherapy (there is nothing vaccine about it) apparently because it is what vaccination ought to be and is not."
"Scientists haven't found a vaccine for cancer yet."
A substance given to stimulate a body's production of antibodies and provide immunity against a disease without causing the disease itself in the treatment, prepared from the agent that causes the disease (or a derivative of it; or a related, also effective, but safer disease), or a synthetic substitute; also, a dose of such a substance.
Common synonyms include: a, antitoxin, autogenous vaccine, b, bang, booster.
Scientists haven't found a vaccine for cancer yet.
Pronounced /vækˈsin/.
Learned borrowing from Latin vaccīnus (“of or derived from a cow”), from vacca (“cow (female cattle)”) + -īnus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives). Sense 1 refers to the early use of the cowpox virus as a vaccination against smallpox: see New Latin variolae vaccīnae (“cowpox”, plural, literally “infectious diseases of cattle causing pustules”), coined by the British physician and scientist Edward Jenner (1749–1823).
The noun is probably partly: * derived from vaccine (adjective) (see etymology 1); and * borrowed from French vaccine (“cowpox (short for variole vaccine); vaccination against smallpox using material from cowpox”), vaccin (“cowpox material used for smallpox vaccination”), both noun uses of vaccin (adjective), from Latin vaccīnus (see etymology 1). The verb is derived from the noun. Cognates * Italian vaccina * Portuguese vacina * Spanish vacuna