Contagious

How to spell contagious

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce contagious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contagious mean?

1. adjectiveOf a disease, able to be spread from one person to another by direct or indirect contact.
2. adjectiveOf an emotion, attitude, or behaviour, tending to spread quickly from one person to others.

Contagious in a sentence

• The clinic isolated patients whose illness was still contagious.

• Her enthusiasm at the meeting was utterly contagious.

• Chickenpox is highly contagious in the days before the rash appears.

• Panic in a crowd can be dangerously contagious.

Where does contagious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin contagiosus, meaning 'spreading by contact', which was built on the noun contagio, 'a touching' or 'contact'. At the root sits the verb tangere, 'to touch', combined with the prefix con-, 'together with'; so the literal idea was something passed along when things touch. English took it up in the late 1300s, at first describing diseases that travel from one body to another. The very same tangere root still touches our everyday words 'contact', 'tangible', and 'contaminate', which is a useful reminder that the middle of contagious is built on 'tag' rather than the '-ous' ending alone. By the 1600s the word had also gained its figurative use for moods and behaviour that spread quickly through a group.

How the word is built

• con- (together, with)
• tag (from Latin tangere: to touch)
• -ious (adjective suffix)