venom (sg.)| poisonous secretion of snakes/creatures/plants; acrid element
The special contagion, inappreciable to the senses and acting in exceedingly minute quantities, by which a disease is introduced into the organism and maintained there.
Fig.: Any morbid corrupting quality in intellectual or moral conditions; something that poisons the mind or the soul; as, the virus of obscene books.
Contagious or poisonous matter, as of specific ulcers, the bite of snakes, etc.; -- applied to organic poisons.
virus
\vi"rus\ (?), n. [l., a slimy liquid, a poisonous liquid, poison, stench; akin to gr. &?; poison, skr. visha. cf. wizen, v. i.]
1. (med.) (a) contagious or poisonous matter, as of specific ulcers, the bite of snakes, etc.; -- applied to organic poisons. (b) the special contagion, inappreciable to the senses and acting in exceedingly minute quantities, by which a disease is introduced into the organism and maintained there.
note: the specific virus of diseases is now regarded as a microscopic living vegetable organism which multiplies within the body, and, either by its own action or by the associated development of a chemical poison, causes the phenomena of the special disease.
2. fig.: any morbid corrupting quality in intellectual or moral conditions; something that poisons the mind or the soul; as, the virus of obscene books.
virus
n : ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic
similar words(11)
general public virus
variola minor virus
wound tumor virus
varicella zoster virus
respiratory syncytial virus
tobacco mosaic virus
tumor virus
virus infection
variola virus
variola major virus
boot virus
Noun
1. (virology) ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic; a piece of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in a thin coat of protein
(hypernym) microorganism
(hyponym) arbovirus, arborvirus
(classification) virology
(class) virion
2. a harmful or corrupting agency; "bigotry is a virus that must not be allowed to spread"; "the virus of jealousy is latent in everyone"
(hypernym) representation, delegacy, agency
3. a software program capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer; "a true virus cannot spread to another computer without human assistance"
(synonym) computer virus
(hypernym) malevolent program
Source: Specialized encyclopedia and dictionaries
Description: An infectious agent composed of a single type of nucleic acid, DNA or RNA, enclosed in a coat of protein. Viruses can multiply only within living cells.
Source: Specialized encyclopedia and dictionaries
She can shoot darts filled with virus, causing the victim to die and explode in a toxic cloud of gas, which will also kill nearby infantry unints and even damage buildings.
In the 1990s, viruses have become a serious problem, especially among Wintel and Macintosh users; the lack of security on these machines enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system (Unix machines, by contrast, are immune to such attacks). The production of special anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria among users; many lusers tend to blame everything that doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this sense of `virus' has passed not only into techspeak but into also popular usage (where it is often incorrectly used to denote a worm or even a Trojan horse). See phage; compare back door; see also Unix conspiracy.
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A microorganism that can infect cells and cause disease.
