Other forms: immunities
Immunity is the body's ability to resist a disease. Build immunity, natural immunity, immunity wanes.
It comes from infection or from vaccination, and it fades at different rates for different diseases. Herd immunity is the point at which enough of a population is protected to stop a disease spreading. In law, immunity is protection from prosecution: diplomatic immunity, immunity from prosecution in exchange for evidence. Note immune; immunise; and that immunity is not the same as never catching anything.
1nounimmunityThe body's ability to resist a disease.
“Immunity from that vaccine lasts about ten years.”
2nounprotectionProtection from prosecution.
“The witness was offered immunity if she testified against the gang leader.”
immunity is a protection.
Latin immunitas meant exemption from public duties. The legal sense came into English first and the medical one was borrowed from it in the nineteenth century, so a vaccinated body is exempt in the same way a diplomat is.
Latin
immūnitās
Old French
immunité
Middle English
immunite
English, today
immunity
From Middle English immunite, from Old French immunité, from Latin immūnitās, in the legal sense; for the medical use see immunization. Equivalent to immune + ity. Displaced native Old English frēols (“privilege, immunity”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA