infects

7 definitions • 11 examples

to pass a disease to a person, animal, or plant:

(be) infected with The ward was full of children infected with TB.

All the tomato plants are infected with a virus.

If a place, wound, or substance is infected, it contains bacteria or other things that can cause disease:

The meat had been infected by E coli bacteria.

to make someone have the same feeling or emotion as you:

Her optimism seemed to infect all those around her.

to pass harmful programs from one computer to another, or within files in the same computer:

A computer virus may lurk unseen in a computer's memory, calling up and infecting each of the machine's data files in turn.

to cause disease in someone by introducing organisms such as bacteria or viruses:

Mosquitoes can infect people with malaria.

fig. Fear of an attack infected the entire city.

to damage a computer's software or data with a harmful program that has been passed from another computer:

be infected by/with sth The hackers hijacked personal computers that had been previously infected by a virus.

an infected website

to pass a disease to a person, animal, or plant:

be infected by/with sth A lab worker had been infected with a potentially dangerous agent.

There was an alarming report of meat from infected animals being sold to supermarkets.