Bacteria

How to spell bacteria

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce bacteria

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bacteria mean?

1. nounMicroscopic single-celled organisms, some of which cause disease and others of which are harmless or beneficial.

Bacteria in a sentence

• The laboratory tested the water for harmful bacteria.

• Antibiotics work by killing the bacteria responsible for the infection.

Where does bacteria come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek word baktērion, meaning 'little staff' or 'little rod', a diminutive of baktron, a 'stick' or 'cane'. Scientists adopted it because the first such microbes observed under early microscopes were rod-shaped, so they were literally named after their resemblance to tiny rods. The Latinised singular bacterium was coined in the 1830s by the German naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, and the plural bacteria followed the standard Latin pattern of turning a singular ending in -um into -a. The word entered general English use during the later 1800s as germ theory took hold and the role of these organisms in disease became understood. The connection to a 'rod' shape also explains the related medical term bacillus, which is simply the Latin for 'little stick'. The spelling trap for adults is the unstressed middle: the -teri- section is easy to misjudge, and people sometimes slip into writing 'bacteer-' or doubling letters.

How the word is built

• bacteri- (from Greek baktron/baktērion: little rod or staff)
• -a (Latin/Greek plural ending)