antivirus

UK/ˈantɪvʌɪrəs/US/ˈantɪvʌɪrəs/

adjectiveB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,941 of 15,258leans written

Antivirus means made to find and remove harmful computer programs. Antivirus software.

It works by recognising known threats, which is why it must be updated constantly. Antivirus software slows a machine down, which is the cost of the protection.

Definitions of antivirus

1adjectiveantivirusMade to find and remove harmful computer programs.B2+
“The antivirus program found a harmful file hidden in the email attachment.”

antivirus is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin
vīrus
Middle English
virus
English
virus
English, today
antivirus

From anti- + virus. virus comes from Middle English virus, from Latin vīrus. 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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

antivirus in the wild

However, with the proliferation of other malware, antivirus software started to protect against other computer threats.
Antivirus software
ESET NOD32, commonly known as NOD32, is an antivirus software package made by the Slovak company ESET.
ESET NOD32
In 2015, the firm was the tenth largest antivirus vendor worldwide, with 2.0% of the marketplace.
Panda Security
ClamWin Free Antivirus is a free and open-source antivirus tool for Windows.
ClamWin Free Antivirus
At the time, AVG was the third-ranked antivirus product.
Avast

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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.

Related words

the vīrus family

virus

antivirus — used about once every 159,543 pages · #14,941 · point at the bar for the others

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