disinfectant

UK/dɪs.ɪnˈfɛktənt/US/dɪs.ɪnˈfɛktənt/

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — infect sits at #7,609neutral

Other forms: disinfectants

Disinfectant is the cleaning liquid that kills germs. The smell of a hospital corridor, and of a school in the holidays.

It kills microorganisms on surfaces, which is different from an antiseptic, used on skin, and from a sterilant, which kills absolutely everything. Contact time matters more than most people realise, since a surface must stay wet for the stated period to work at all. Wiping it off immediately achieves very little, which is the most useful thing on any bottle that nobody reads.

Definitions of disinfectant

1noundisinfectantA chemical that destroys germs on surfaces.C1
“She wiped the worktop down with disinfectant.”

Where it comes from

French
désinfectant
English, today
disinfectant

From disinfect + -ant, French désinfectant.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

disinfectant in the wild

A disinfectant is a chemical substance or compound used to inactivate or destroy microorganisms on inert surfaces.
Disinfectant
Biocides are intended to destroy all forms of life, not just microorganisms, whereas disinfectants work by destroying the cell wall of microbes or interfering with their metabolism.
Disinfectant
Lysol has been used since its invention in the late 19th century as a household and industrial cleaning agent, and previously as a medical disinfectant.
Lysol
Calculations by Harriette Chick showed that the killing of bacteria by disinfectants followed first order kinetics.
Phenol coefficient
One way to compare disinfectants is to compare how well they do against a known disinfectant and rate them accordingly using the Phenol coefficient.
Phenol coefficient

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

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