bacillus
noun/bæˈsɪl.əs/
Etymology Learned borrowing from Latin bacillus (“little staff, wand”), diminutive of baculum (“stick, staff, walking stick”).
1
Any of various rod-shaped, spore-forming aerobic bacteria in the genus Bacillus, some of which cause disease.
- 'This again,' said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, 'is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera - the cholera germ.'1895, H. G. Wells, The Stolen Bacillus:
- "You will conceive a bunch of grapes," said he, "which are covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus.1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
2
Any bacilliform (rod-shaped) bacterium.
3
Broadly, Figuratively Something which spreads like bacterial infection.
- The “bacillus of boom or depression,” he wrote, travels freely “from country to country.”1934 [2018], Gottfried Haberler quoted in Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 71
- Derived terms
- Actinobacillus, bacillicidal, bacillicide, bacilliferous, colibacillus, comma bacillus, Döderlein's bacillus, Eberth's bacillus, Klebs-Löffler bacillus, Koch's bacillus, microbacillus, thiobacillus