disease
Americannoun
-
a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.
- Synonyms:
- malady, disorder, infirmity, indisposition, distemper, derangement, complaint, morbidity
- Antonyms:
- health
-
any abnormal condition in a plant that interferes with its vital physiological processes, caused by pathogenic microorganisms, parasites, unfavorable environmental, genetic, or nutritional factors, etc.
-
any harmful, depraved, or morbid condition, as of the mind or society.
His fascination with executions is a disease.
-
decomposition of a material under special circumstances.
tin disease.
verb (used with object)
noun
-
any impairment of normal physiological function affecting all or part of an organism, esp a specific pathological change caused by infection, stress, etc, producing characteristic symptoms; illness or sickness in general
-
a corresponding condition in plants
-
any situation or condition likened to this
the disease of materialism
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of disease
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English disese, from Anglo-French dese(a)se, disaise; dis- 1 + ease
Explanation
A disease is a health condition that has a specific set of symptoms and traits — such as malaria or heart disease. Disease is not always about the human body being sick. Plants and animals are often the victims of disease. People also use the word disease in a more figurative sense to illustrate just how bad or damaging a negative influence can be — like the disease of greed among capitalists or the disease of plagiarism among college students.
Vocabulary lists containing disease
Ecology - Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems - Introductory
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Ecology - Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems - Middle School and High School
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Workshop 5, Part 1
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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:
Instead, they primarily control the disease by helping tissues absorb more glucose or prompting the pancreas to release more insulin.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 28, 2026
As scientists link oral bacteria to heart disease and cognitive decline, a push is under way to treat the mouth as a source of bodywide inflammation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
“We don’t really see many well dogs,” the London native acknowledged during a visit last year when he found Cosmo was in the early stages of kidney disease.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
The findings support earlier evidence showing that fatty liver disease and insulin resistance are the main disease processes affecting people in Tübingen's type 2 diabetes risk cluster 5.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 28, 2026
It was smallpox, the most dreaded disease of all.
From I Survived the American Revolution, 1776 by Lauren Tarshis
The results could also offer clues about neurodegenerative diseases.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
Those in the wild today are descendants from a small population, meaning their genetic similarities make them particularly vulnerable to adapting to new pressures, like diseases or climate change.
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
This is a nasty effort to influence the outside experts, many of whom aren’t intimately familiar with the treatments or diseases.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
The Southwest Utah Public Health Department stocks vaccines against measles, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis B, and other diseases.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
They shared a single piece of soap with other prisoners, including those with open sores and diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis.
From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling
Wacky animal sidekicks once felt vibrant in a holistic world of artifice; here, a goggle-eyed rooster just looks diseased.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
One promising possibility would be to intercept Tau containing extracellular vesicles after they leave diseased neurons but before they reach healthy ones.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 30, 2026
On April 24, 29 people—and the body of the diseased passenger—disembarked.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
They evaluated how each substance affected the diseased nerve cells, leading to the identification of sildenafil as a promising candidate.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 31, 2026
Some bacteria are only harmful to us when they make exotoxins, and they only do this when they are, in a sense, diseased themselves.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
In either case we have diabetes, the sugar irritating and diseasing the kidneys as it passes.”
From Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why What Medical Writers Say by Allen, Martha Meir
They provide for your wants, hearken to your complaints, nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so render you incapable.
From Charlemont; Or, the Pride of the Village. a Tale of Kentucky by Simms, William Gilmore
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.
