virus

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A tiny living agent that causes disease by spreading inside the cells of a living host.

   The flu is caused by a virus.

2. 2
   noun

   An illness caused by such an agent.

   He's got a virus and had to stay home from school.

3. 3
   noun

   A harmful computer program that copies itself and spreads between computers, often damaging data.

   A virus infected every file on the hard drive.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Virus was borrowed from Latin virus, “slimy liquid” or “poison,” and originally referred in English to snake venom. It later denoted a substance produced by disease, while the modern biological sense developed in the late 19th century. The computing sense dates from the early 1970s.

From Middle English virus, from Latin vīrus (“poison, slime, venom”), via rhotacism from Proto-Italic *weizos, from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“fluidity, slime, poison”). First use in the computer context by David Gerrold in his 1972 book When HARLIE Was One.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary