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To communicate a disease to ( a person ) by inserting infectious matter in the skin or flesh; as, to inoculate a person with the virus of smallpox,rabies, etc. See Vaccinate.

Leprous; infectious; corrupting; poisonous. "The leperous distillment." Shak.

Infectious particles or germs floating in the air; air made noxious by the presence of such particles or germs; noxious effluvia; malaria.

- particularly applied to bacteria and similar organisms, esp. such are supposed to cause infectious diseases.

A very minute plant, one of certain unicellular algæ, such as the germs of various infectious diseases are believed to be.

A microörganism which is supposed to act like a ferment in causing or propagating certain infectious or contagious diseases; a pathogenic bacterial organism.

A specific infectious febrile disorder characterized by a nonsuppurative inflammation of the parotid glands; epidemic or infectious parotitis.

An infectious and fatal disease among cattle. Bacon. A murrain on you, may you be afflicted with a pestilent disease. Shak.

Inflammation of the parotid glands. Epidemic, or Infectious, parotitis, mumps.

One of a class of virulent microörganisms or bacteria found in the tissues and fluids in infectious diseases, and supposed to be the cause of the disease; a pathogenic organism; a pathogenic bacterium; -- opposed to zymogene.

Pest-bearing; pestilential; noxious to health; malignant; infectious; contagious; as, pestiferous bodies. "Poor, pestiferous creatures begging alms." Evelyn. "Unwholesome and pestiferous occupations." Burke.

Specifically, the disease known as the plague; hence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating. The pestilence That walketh in darkness. Ps. xci. 6.

Hence: Mischievous; noxious; pernicious; morally destructive. So pestilential, so infectious a thing is sin. Jer. Taylor.

to gather here and there; as, to pick up a livelihood; to pick up news.(c) to acquire (an infectious disease); as, to pick up a cold on the airplane. (d) To meet (a person) and induce to accompany one; as, to pick up a date at the mall. [See several other defs in MW10]

ellow flag hoisted at the fore of a vessel or hung from a building, to give warning of an infectious disease; -- called also the yellow jack, and yellow flag.

Infectious; catching. [Scot. & Prov. Eng.] H. Kingsley.

The pox, or venereal disease; a chronic, specific, infectious disease, usually communicated by sexual intercourse or by hereditary transmission, and occurring in three stages known as primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis. See under Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.Treponema pallidum. Usu. tretable with penicillin…

Infectious; contageous. [Obs.] Beau. & Fl. -- Tak"ing*ly, adv. -- Tak"ing*ness, n.

An acute infectious febrile disease, resembling typhoid fever, with muscular pains, disturbance of the digestive organs, jaundice, etc.

A fermentation; hence, an analogous process by which an infectious disease is believed to be developed.