Immune

How to spell immune

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce immune

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does immune mean?

1. adjectiveResistant to a particular infection or toxin because the body has the necessary antibodies or defences.
2. adjectiveFree from or unaffected by something unpleasant or obligatory.

Immune in a sentence

• After the vaccination, she was largely immune to the virus.

• No company is immune to the pressures of a shrinking market.

• People who recover from the illness often become immune to it.

• Diplomats are often immune from local prosecution.

Where does immune come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin immunis, which literally meant 'exempt from a public service or duty', formed from the negative prefix in- (not) combined with munus, meaning 'duty', 'service', or 'obligation'. In ancient Rome, a person described as immunis was free from paying taxes or performing civic burdens, so the earliest sense was wholly about legal and financial exemption. English took the word in the 1400s, mostly in that older sense of being exempt or free from something burdensome. The modern medical meaning, being protected from a disease, only blossomed in the late nineteenth century as the science of immunity developed. The same munus root still survives in words like 'municipal' and 'remuneration', and the double m in immune (from the assimilated im- before m) is the small spelling detail worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• im- (not, without)
• mune (from Latin munus: duty, service, obligation)