pathogen

From patho- +‎ -gen.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpæθəd͡ʒn̩/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: path‧o‧gen

• Audio (US):

  (file)

pathogen (plural pathogens)

1. (pathology, immunology) An agent that can cause disease, especially an infectious microorganism, such as a bacterium, virus, protozoon or fungus.

   Synonym: infectious agent

   • 2013 January, Katie L. Burke, “Ecological Dependency”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 101, number 1, archived from the original on 9 February 2017, page 64:

     In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.” His quest leads him around the world to study a variety of suspect zoonoses—animal-hosted pathogens that infect humans.

In most contexts, the term pathogen is exclusively applied to infectious microorganisms, including viruses, and does not cover harmful substances such as asbestos or various toxins. Some authors reserve the term for the microorganisms that are the actual cause of an observed case of disease, so in this usage the same microorganism that is pathogenic in one host may not be categorized as a pathogen in another infected host.

• heptagon, phone tag

From πάθος (páthos, “suffering, pain”) + -γενής (-genḗs, “producer of”). Equivalent to patho- + -gen.

• IPA^(key): /ˌpatoˈɡeːn/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: pa‧tho‧gen

pathogen (strong nominative masculine singular pathogener, comparative pathogener, superlative am pathogensten)

1. pathogenic

   Synonym: krankheitserregend

• Pathogenität

• “pathogen” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “pathogen” in Duden online
• “pathogen”, in Online-Wortschatz-Informationssystem Deutsch (in German), Mannheim: Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, 2008–
• “pathogen” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon