INFECT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Infect

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/ɪnfˈɛkt/ Listen

verb

Infect v. t. (past & past part. infected; pres. part. infecting)

To taint with morbid matter or any pestilential or noxious substance or effluvium by which disease is produced; as, to infect a lancet; to infect an apartment.

To affect with infectious disease; to communicate infection to; as, infected with the plague. "Them that were left alive being infected with this disease."

To communicate to or affect with, as qualities or emotions, esp. bad qualities; to corrupt; to contaminate; to taint by the communication of anything noxious or pernicious. "Infected Ston's daughters with like heat."

(Law) To contaminate with illegality or to expose to penalty.

Synonyms: To poison; vitiate; pollute; defile.

adjective

Infect adj. Infected. Cf. Enfect. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Infect'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Infect" Quotes from Famous Books

... kind will abound among such folk, inevitably, and they will resort to extraordinary expedients in their search for relief. Although squeamish as a race about inflicting much pain in cold blood, they will systematically infect other animals with their own rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves. Conditions among them will be such that this will ...

— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... there be any privilege or liberty that ever Christ gave us, but they have taken it from us, and made a prey of it. 2. This mountain is a pestiferous mountain; it hath been the mountain that hath been as a pest, to infect the kirk of Christ with superstition, heresy and error; and withal, it hath been a destroying mountain; for they have destroyed the fair carved work of our first reformation. 3. They are mountains of pride; for greater pride cannot be, than there is upon this mountain; they rule as tyrants ...

— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... am no propagandist. I am not sanguine enough to suppose that I could do anything to stop either the adulteration or the demolition of old streets. I do not wish to infect the public with my own misgivings. On the contrary, my motive for this essay is to inoculate the public with my own placid indifference in a certain matter which seems always to cause them painful anxiety. Whenever a new highway is about to be opened, the ...

— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... that was with her. He had expected to find her sad and comparatively silent, but he had never seen her in a more lively mood, full of light talk and jest and a gay good-humor that could not have failed to infect the most hardened cynic. Certainly he did not escape its influence, nor did he seek to do so, but as he watched her he thought there was a slight touch of feverishness to her high spirits, as if she had just escaped from ...

— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... Supervisor, flaming, "that those trees were deliberately brought here to infect the ...

— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

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