CONTAGIOUS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Contagious

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/kəntˈeɪdʒəs/ Listen

adjective

Contagious adj.

1.

(Med.) Communicable by contact, by a virus, or by a bodily exhalation; catching; as, a contagious disease.

2.

Conveying or generating disease; pestilential; poisonous; as, contagious air.

3.

Spreading or communicable from one to another; exciting similar emotions or conduct in others. "His genius rendered his courage more contagious." "The spirit of imitation is contagious."

Synonyms: Contagious, Infectious. Although often used as synonyms, originally these words were used in very diverse senses; but, in general, a contagious disease has been considered as one which is caught from another by some near contact, by the breath, by bodily effluvia, etc.; while an infectious disease supposed some entirely different cause acting by a hidden influence, like the miasma of prison ships, of marshes, etc., infecting the system with disease. In either case, a pathogenic microorganism is the direct cause of the disease. This distinction, though not universally admitted by medical men, as to the literal meaning of the words, certainly applies to them in their figurative use. Thus we speak of the contagious influence of evil associates; their contagion of bad example, the contagion of fear, etc., when we refer to transmission by proximity or contact. On the other hand, we speak of infection by bad principles, etc., when we consider anything as diffused by some hidden influence.

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Etymology of 'Contagious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Contagious" Quotes from Famous Books

... see what we are to do about Evadne!" and Mrs. Hildreth sighed disconsolately. "She looks like a walking shadow. I should not be surprised if she had inherited her father's disease, and they say now that consumption is as contagious ...

— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... dance down a whole regiment of drawing-room knights. He could sing better than any amateur I ever heard; and was the best judge of a meerschaum-pipe I ever saw. Lucky? Yes, he was—and especially so, and more than all else—on account of the joyousness of his soul. There was a contagious and a godlike hilarity in his broad, open brow, his frank, laughing eyes, and his mobile lips. He seemed to carry about with him a bracing moral atmosphere. The sight of him had the same effect on the dull man of ordinary life that ...

— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... not find one person in the Sandwich Islands who had the least doubt as to leprosy being contagious, though it is possible to be exposed to the disease for years without contracting it. Father Damien told me that he had always expected that he should sooner or later become a leper, though exactly how he caught ...

— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... epidemic of contagious sickness had broken out in Cranford, and as a number of the scholars of the school were affected, the trustees had reluctantly decided that the session between early Fall and New Years must be abandoned. If all were well at the later date, after the usual holidays, school would ...

— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... Chloric acid is used in the preparation of chlorides with bioxide of manganese, and with chlorides in the preparation of hypochlorides of lime, known in commerce under the name of bleaching powder, and improperly called chloride of lime, which is used as a disinfectant in contagious diseases, in bleaching stuffs, and in the manufacture of paper from vegetable fibers, and in the manufacture of gelatine extracted from bones, as well as in fermenting molasses and in the manufacture of sugar from beet root. Sulphur is also used in the preparation ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

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