pathogen
Americannoun
noun
-
An agent that causes infection or disease, especially a microorganism, such as a bacterium or protozoan, or a virus.
-
See Note at germ
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of pathogen
Explanation
A pathogen is a tiny living organism, such as a bacterium or virus, that makes people sick. Washing your hands frequently helps you avoid the pathogens that can make you sick. Pathos is the Greek word for disease and -genes means "born of." So, a pathogen is something that causes disease, like a virus like the rhinovirus, which causes the common cold. At summer picnics, people are cautious about keeping certain foods like potato salad in coolers with ice — the eggs in such dishes spoil quickly out in the heat, introducing pathogens that can make people sick.
Vocabulary lists containing pathogen
Common Senses: Path ("Feeling")
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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:
"A future in which pathogen samples and information move quickly, without needless delay; and in which the benefits that come from them reach the people who need them most, fairly and in time."
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
Ebola is a highly dangerous pathogen, but it is not an airborne virus like flu or Covid.
From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2026
“If there was ever a question about whether there was a pathogen in our products,” McAfee later told me, “I’d be the first one to recall immediately, voluntarily.”
From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026
The deepest mystery of the plague is why this bacterium—in normal times a pathogen of wild rodents—erupted to cause some of the most world-altering disease outbreaks on record.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
The first is the lack of acquired immunity—immunity gained from a previous exposure to a pathogen.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
As models become more capable, the barrier to engineering dangerous pathogens drops.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
This included patients' information as well as biological resources known as pathogens - organisms that cause disease such as viruses, bacteria and parasites.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
Research has shown that raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens; while aging can mitigate some risk, harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day maturation process.
From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026
Countries sharing dangerous emerging pathogens must be able to trust that the vaccines and treatments born from that sharing will reach their own people, they said.
From Barron's ● Jun. 15, 2026
Normally, it's not an ideal way to grow crops, because it spreads disease: Human waste has pathogens in it that, you guessed it, infect humans.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
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.
