Other forms: contagions
Contagion is the spreading of disease or of feeling by contact. Fear of contagion, financial contagion, emotional contagion.
The financial sense is now as common as the medical one, since a crisis in one country's banks spreads to others by the same logic. Emotional contagion is the measured tendency of a mood to pass through a room.
1nouncontagionThe spreading of disease or of feeling by contact.
“Doctors wore masks and gloves to reduce the risk of contagion.”
contagion is a spreading.
Latin contagio means a touching, from con-, with, plus tangere, to touch.
Proto-Indo-European
*teh₂g-
Latin
contāgiō — a touching, contact, contagion
English, today
contagion
Built from
From Middle English - (late 14th century), from Old French -, from Latin contāgiō (“a touching, contact, contagion”) related to contingō (“touch closely”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA