trypanosome
noun
trypanosome is a noun meaning “Trypanosoma brucei, a major human pathogen that causes sleeping sickness” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-R-Y-P-A-N-O-S-O-M-E, and it appears about once in every 47 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of trypanosome is trypanosomes.
What does trypanosome mean?
noun
- 1
Trypanosoma brucei, a major human pathogen that causes sleeping sickness.
- 2
Trypanosoma cruzi, a major human pathogen that causes Chagas disease.
- 3
Trypomastigotes, a morphological class of trypanosomatids with a flagellum laterally attached to the cell body.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce trypanosome?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-trypanosome.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of trypanosome
- trypanosomes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is trypanosome?
Trypanosome appears about once in every 47 million words in written English, the 211,986th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Trypanosome in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense any of a group of protozoan parasites transmitted by biting insects:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | trypanosome |
| German | Trypanosoma |
| Portuguese | tripanossoma, tripanossomo |
| Spanish | tripanosoma |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does trypanosome come from?
Learned borrowing from translingual Trypanosoma. By surface analysis, trypano- + -some.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).