noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
This entry combines structured lexical data with WordToolSet review checks. Definitions, examples, synonyms, and usage notes may come from different source tables, so the page is designed to show evidence from more than one angle before you rely on "virus" in a final draft.
If a word has several senses, prefer the sense that matches your sentence's grammar and surrounding context. A correct definition can still be the wrong choice when the sentence needs a different register, emphasis, or level of specificity.
Read the first definition as a starting point, then check the example, synonyms, and part of speech before treating "virus" as the right word for your sentence.
If your draft is formal, technical, persuasive, or sensitive, compare "virus" with a nearby alternative so the final choice matches both meaning and reader expectation.
Check whether "virus" is acting as noun, verb, slang in your sentence. A definition is only useful when the grammar matches the way the word is being used.
Compare it with "acaricide" and other nearby choices to see whether the sentence needs a softer, stronger, or more familiar word.
Use the example sentence below as an evidence check, then read your own sentence out loud to catch tone or rhythm problems.
Review note: Definition pages are checked for source coverage, sentence evidence, synonym support, and editorial insight before they are treated as approval-ready pages. If the evidence is too thin, the page remains available to users but is kept out of the approval-facing indexed inventory.
Before publishing a sentence with "virus", ask whether the word helps the reader understand the idea faster. A precise word should reduce confusion, not simply make the sentence look more polished.
When the definition, synonym evidence, and example context point in the same direction, the word is usually a safer choice. When they conflict, revise the sentence or choose a clearer alternative.
"Viruses are the smallest and most simplified forms of life."
"Meronym: virion (individual particle)"
"Under electron microscopy, a few viruses were seen floating near the cells."
"Not much virus was detectable on a nucleic acid test; the viral load was very low."
"He's got a virus and had to stay home from school."
"Brazil, that inferno where every budding flower and every buzzing bluebottle fly bears a lascivious virus."
"Wait a minute! Is this one of those virus emails?!"
"I am tired of the mind viruses that are crippling people living in the western world — especially in my own nation. Sadly, Australia is becoming known as a nation of whingers."
"I'm just going to virus anyone who tries cheating on this game."
"Scientists are fighting to stem the spread of the AIDS virus."
A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and that sometimes causes disease in the host organism (such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms).
Common synonyms include: acaricide, adenovirus, aerial infection, aerobe, aerobic bacteria, aerobic organism.
Scientists are fighting to stem the spread of the AIDS virus.
Pronounced /ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/.
From Middle English virus, from Latin vīrus (“poison, slime, venom”), via rhotacism from Proto-Italic *weizos, from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“fluidity, slime, poison”). First use in the computer context by David Gerrold in his 1972 book When HARLIE Was One.