Etymologically
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virus

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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
  • 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