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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).
Unless professionally inspected, they may also carry along unseen pests and diseases (particularly small insects and microbes such as virus or bacteria) whose populations might explode catastrophically in new locations.
(informal,metonymically) A disease caused by such an infectious agent; a viral illness.
He's got a virus and had to stay home from school.
(archaic)Venom, as produced by a poisonous animal etc.
1890, Aluísio Azevedo, The Slum:
Brazil, that inferno where every budding flower and every buzzing bluebottle fly bears a lascivious virus.
(computing) A type of malware which can covertly transmit itself between computers via networks (especially the Internet) or removable storage such as disks, often causing damage to systems and data; also computer virus.
2011, Pat Mesiti, The $1 Million Reason to Change Your Mind:
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.
From Latinvīrus. Coined in the virological sense by Martinus Beijerinck; the word had been previously used for pathogens, although not for viruses in the modern sense. The computing sense derives from Englishvirus.
Like most Latin borrowings, this word kept its original Latin gender (neuter); it is one of the few Dutch words ending in -us which is not masculine; cf. also corpus and opus. Marginally, use as a masculine noun is sometimes erroneously encountered, indeed based on the ending.
“virus”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-04
a submicroscopic, non-cellular structure consisting of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and often causes disease in the host organism; such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms.
(uncountable) a quantity of such infectious agents.
(metonymically) a disease caused by such an infectious agent; a viral illness.
(computing) a type of malware which can covertly transmit itself between computers via networks (especially the Internet) or removable storage such as disks, often causing damage to systems and data.
There is also the heteroclitic genitive singular vīrūs.
When used in modern biology with the same meaning of English virus, a plural can be formed using the same suffixes of regular neuters of the 2nd declension (i.e., vīra, vīrōrum, vīrīs, vīra, vīrīs, vīra):[2]
Second-declension noun (neuter, nominative/accusative/vocative plural in -a).
^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “vīrus”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, pages 682-683
^ William T. Stearn, Botanical Latin. History, Grammar, Syntax, Terminology and Vocabulary, ed. 3a (David & Charles, 1983): "Virus: virus (s.n. II), gen. sing. viri, nom. pl. vira, gen. pl. vīrorum (to be distinguished from virorum, of men)."
Further reading
"virus", in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
"virus". in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
virus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
"virus", in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly
(biology,virology) A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure consisting of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and often causes disease in the host organism; such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms.