bacillus
Americannoun
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bacilli
plural
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any rod-shaped or cylindrical bacterium of the genus Bacillus, comprising spore-producing bacteria.
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(formerly) any bacterium.
noun
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bacilli
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bacillus
1880–85; < Late Latin, variant of Latin bacillum (diminutive of baculum ) staff, walking stick
Vocabulary lists containing bacillus
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Scientists postulate that the bacillus originated in some lower animal and jumped to humans.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 23, 2022
From that point, Kinyoun was at war with more than a bacillus.
From Nature ● Apr. 23, 2019
And in this particular race the winner will probably turn out to be the TB bacillus.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 29, 2012
Black rats carried fleas that were infested with a bacillus called Yersinia pestis.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2012
There is also another kind of plague to worry about: the plague bacillus is endemic all over the Earth.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Swabs from the skin, nose and mouth, as well as saliva and stool samples, showed that 34 percent of all participants had antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as resistant Gram-negative bacilli or vancomycin-resistant enterococci.
From Scientific American ● May 16, 2022
Cholera, tuberculosis, diphtheria and typhoid bacilli were subsequently identified.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 18, 2020
Is the humid air a forum whence bacilli sense a quorum?
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2018
Part b: The micrograph shows hotdog-shaped bacilli about 2 microns long.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
A culture showed that the bacilli from his body were resistant to all four of the drugs he’d been given, and to one other first-line antibiotic as well.
From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
