infect

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   communicate a disease to

   Your children have infected you with this head cold

2. 2
   verb

   affect in a contagious way

   Your laughter infects everyone who is in the same room as you.

3. 3
   verb

   corrupt with ideas or an ideology

   society was infected by racism

4. 4
   verb

   To bring (the body or part of it) into contact with a substance that causes illness (a pathogen), so that the pathogen begins to act on the body; (of a pathogen) to come into contact with (a body or body part) and begin to act on it.

   Not everyone will be infected when an epidemic strikes.

5. 5
   verb

   To make somebody enthusiastic about one's own passion, or to communicate a feeling to others, or a feeling communicating itself to others.

   Her passion for dancing has infected me.

6. 6
   adj

   Infected.

   And in the imitation of these twain, / Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns / With an imperial voice, many are infect.

7. 7
   verb

   contaminate with a disease or microorganism

8. 8
   verb

   To contaminate (an object or substance) with a pathogen.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin īnfectus, equivalent to in- (“not”) + factus, perfect passive participle of faciō (“to do, make”).