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:
But tuberculosis is also curable and preventable, caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and spread when people who are sick expel bacteria into the air, usually by coughing.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 17, 2021
A series of laboratory discoveries in the late 19th century taught scientists that Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the bacillus that caused diphtheria, killed animals and people by producing a toxin.
From Slate ● Feb. 9, 2021
From that point, Kinyoun was at war with more than a bacillus.
From Nature ● Apr. 23, 2019
And so – not without a certain delight in my own suffering, of course – I sat on the couch, a sniffling bacillus tucked cosily on either side.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 13, 2015
The first European incursion of the Black Death, in 1347-51, was a classic virgin-soil epidemic; mutation had just created the pulmonary version of the bacillus Yersiniapestis.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
All social classes suffered from the disease, but it had its greatest impact on the poor, for whom overcrowding was the worst and whose homes often lacked sunlight, which kills tuberculosis bacilli.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
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
While waiting or serving his sentence, he’d probably get infected with TB—it was estimated that 80 percent of all Russian prisoners had bacilli in their bodies.
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.
