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anthrax

UK/ˈæn.θɹæks/US/ˈæn.θɹæks/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,396 of 15,258neutral

Anthrax is a bacterial disease of sheep and cattle that can pass to people. Anthrax spores, contract anthrax, an anthrax vaccine.

It reaches people through wool, hide or spores, which is why it was once called woolsorters' disease. The spores survive in soil for decades, and that durability is why it has been made into a weapon. It is treatable with antibiotics if caught early.

Definitions of anthrax

  1. 1nounanthraxA bacterial disease of sheep and cattle that can pass to people.B2+

    “The farmers burned the bodies of the sheep that had died of anthrax.”

anthrax is a disease.

Where it comes from

Greek anthrax means coal or a burning boil, from the black sore the skin form produces.

  1. Ancient Greek

    ἄνθραξ — abscess, boil

  2. English, today

    anthrax

From Ancient Greek ἄνθραξ (“abscess, boil”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

anthrax in the wild

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first clinical descriptions of cutaneous anthrax were given by Maret in 1752 and Fournier in 1769.

    Anthrax

  • Before that, anthrax had been described only in historical accounts.

    Anthrax

  • Human anthrax vaccines were developed by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s and in the US and UK in the 1950s.

    Anthrax vaccine

  • The first animal vaccine against anthrax was developed by French chemist Louis Pasteur in 1881.

    Bacillus anthracis

  • Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing five people and infecting seventeen others.

    2001 anthrax attacks

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.