MERS

American

[murz] / mɜrz /

noun

Pathology.

Middle East(ern) Respiratory Syndrome: an often fatal respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus similar to the SARS virus and characterized by fever, coughing, and shortness of breath.

Etymology

Origin of MERS

First recorded in 2010–15

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.

Those illiquid holdings make up an average 20% of smaller funds like MERS.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 2, 2026

That followed a $335-million deal for Simplifile in 2019, and the acquisition of MERS, in which ICE took a majority stake in 2016 and bought outright in 2018.

From Reuters • Mar. 9, 2023

Like many diseases including NiV, Ebola, SARS-CoV-1 and MERS, SARS-CoV-2 more than likely originated from bats.

From Salon • Jan. 19, 2023

Measures like curfews, deployed in many parts of the world in the early days of the pandemic, weren’t effective at containing what was a much more contagious virus than MERS.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 27, 2022

She showed that bat guano used as fertilizer by Thai farmers was contaminated with a coronavirus related to the cause of MERS, and she ranked the spillover potential of different animal viruses.

From Science Magazine • Apr. 13, 2022

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023