virus
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "virus", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "virus" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "virus" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
virus is aEnglishnoun. It means: A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and that sometimes causes disease in the ... Pronounced /ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/. It ranks #3,537 in English word frequency. Often confused with vis and viruses.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | virus |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,537 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 15 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for virus is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,537 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for virus, with forms such as "ivrus", "virrus", and "virsu". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 15 confusable-pair relationships, "vis", "viruses", "vers", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English virus, from Latin vīrus (“poison, slime, venom”), via rhotacism from Proto-Italic *weizos, from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“fluidity, slime, poison”). First use in the computer context by David Gerrold in his 1972 book When HARLIE Was One. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is virus, spelled V-I-R-U-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and that sometimes causes disease in the host organism (such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms).
- 2A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and that sometimes causes disease in the host organism (such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms).
- 3A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and that sometimes causes disease in the host organism (such agents are often classed as nonliving infectious particles and less often as microorganisms).
- 4A quantity of such infectious agents, considered en masse.
- 5A disease caused by such an infectious agent; a viral illness.
- 6Venom, as produced by a poisonous animal etc.
- 7A type of malware which can covertly transmit itself between computers via networks (especially the Internet) or removable storage such as disks, often causing damage to systems and data; also computer virus.
- 8Any type of malware.
- 9Any malicious or dangerous entity that spreads from one place or person to another.
Etymology
From Middle English virus, from Latin vīrus (“poison, slime, venom”), via rhotacism from Proto-Italic *weizos, from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“fluidity, slime, poison”). First use in the computer context by David Gerrold in his 1972 book When HARLIE Was One.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ivrus,virrus,virsu,viruss,viurs,vrius,vvirus
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for virus
Misspelling Variants of "virus"
Frequency rank: #3,537 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter V in our English index: