virus

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈvaɪə.rəs/, US /ˈvaɪ.rəs/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin vīrus (“poison, sap of plants, slimy liquid”),^[2][3][4] from Proto-Italic *weis-o-, probably from Proto-Indo-European *ueis- (“to melt away, flow”), used of foul fluids,^[2] the source also of Sanskrit viṣá- “poison”, Greek ios “poison” and Old Irish fí “poison”.^[3][2][5] It is related to virulent.^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A poisonous substance: 1392 in Barnhart, the late 14th century in Etymonline, at first in medicine the discharge from a wound or sore.^[3][2] The venom of a snake is from 1599 in the OED.^[7][6]

Semantic evolution

By 1728 it meant the contagious matter of venereal disease, and by the 1790s an agent produced in the body of an infected person that could infect others.^[2][3][7] Moral or intellectual poison is from 1778.^[7] The modern scientific sense, a submicroscopic infectious organism, dates from the 1870s and 1880s, and the word was applied to such organisms as they were discovered in the late 1890s.^[2][7][6] A virus infection is from 1954,^[7] the adjective viral from 1948,^[3] and the computer virus from 1972.^[2][7]

Timeline

• 1392 – a poisonous substance.^[3]
• 1599 – snake venom.^[7]
• 1728 – a disease agent.^[7][3]
• 1880 – a submicroscopic organism.^[7]
• 1972 – a computer virus.^[2][7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A very small infectious agent, made of RNA or DNA in a protein coat, that can multiply only inside living cells.
2. (informal) A disease caused by a virus.
3. A harmful or corrupting influence.
4. (computing) A program that copies itself into other programs and can damage a computer.

Word family

• viruslike
• coxsackievirus
• cytomegalovirus
• viral
• virion
• viroid
• antiviral
• adenovirus

Related words

• virulent
• ooze

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press