bacterial

American  

[bak-teer-ee-uhl] / bækˈtɪər i əl /

adjective

1. caused by or relating to bacteria.

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Explanation

If your illness is caused by bacteria, you can describe it as bacterial. For example, a lung infection that results from being exposed to bacteria is called bacterial pneumonia. Some infections and illnesses are caused by viruses, and they're called viral. Other kinds occur when your immune system is invaded by microorganisms called bacteria, and these are bacterial. You're most likely to hear the adjective bacterial when you're sick. The root word, bakterion, is Greek for "small staff or rod." Bacterial organisms were named this way in the 1830's because the first bacteria observed through a microscope were rod-shaped.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bacterial

These observations suggest that interactions between sweeteners, medications, and gut bacteria could have consequences beyond bacterial growth alone, although whether similar effects occur in people remains unknown.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 18, 2026

They then exposed these bacterial cultures to 39 commercially available sweeteners and monitored whether the microorganisms continued multiplying normally.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 18, 2026

They found numerous tiny holes, each approximately matching the dimensions and shape of an individual bacterial cell.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2026

Although it resembled esterases, which are known for breaking down ester bonds, it also shared structural similarities with another important family of bacterial enzymes: beta-lactamases.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2026

How could heat-killed bacterial debris—no more than a lukewarm soup of microbial chemicals—have transmitted a genetic trait to a live bacterium by mere contact?

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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