zoonosis
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of zoonosis
1875–80; < New Latin, irregular < Greek zōio- zoo- + nósos sickness, with ending apparently conformed to -sis
Explanation
An illness that can be spread between animals and humans is a zoonosis. Rabies is one example of a zoonosis that's transmitted when a rabid animal bites a person. Some kinds of zoonoses can be directly transferred from animal to human, while others go through a third animal that acts as a carrier but shows no symptoms. If a human transmits a disease to an animal, it's known as "reverse zoonosis." The list of zoonoses includes cat scratch disease, anthrax, avian flu, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The word comes from the Greek roots zōon, "animal," and nosos, "disease."
Vocabulary lists containing zoonosis
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:
When these viruses cross over from animals into humans, a process known as zoonosis, they can cause disease outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics such as Ebola, flu or Covid-19.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
He did acknowledge calling four signatories “fraudsters,” based on their authorship of a 2020 scientific paper that favored zoonosis as the origin of COVID-19 and dismissed the lab-leak theory as implausible.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2024
And that was a scary moment because of the concept of zoonosis where the disease can jump from one species to another.
From Salon ● Feb. 19, 2024
“The prevalence of lab-leak conspiracy is harmful for us to get further funding to continue our research on zoonosis, which is the major threat to the public health in the future.”
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 23, 2023
A zoonosis is a disease that infects animals but can be transmitted from animals to humans.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 25, 2013
Bats and mice are generally known sources of zoonoses, defined as infections or diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2023
Many of the projects, including Karlsson’s, are at the proof-of-concept stage, but Maria Van Kerkhove, who heads the emerging diseases and zoonoses unit at the World Health Organization, welcomes them.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 5, 2023
Her responsibilities included livestock markets, biosecurity and zoonoses - diseases that can move between animals and humans.
From BBC ● Apr. 25, 2022
Many zoonoses — rabies, Lyme, anthrax, mad cow disease, SARS, Ebola, West Nile, Zika — loom large in public consciousness; others are less familiar: Q fever, orf, Rift Valley fever, Kyasanur Forest disease.
From New York Times ● Jun. 17, 2020
Many were zoonoses that appeared with the domestication of animals, as in the case of tuberculosis.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 25, 2013
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.
