infection

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Invasion by and multiplication of pathogenic microorganisms in a bodily part or tissue, which may produce subsequent tissue injury and progress to overt disease through a variety of cellular or toxic mechanisms.
2. n. An instance of being infected.
3. n. An agent or a contaminated substance responsible for one's becoming infected.
4. n. The pathological state resulting from having been infected.
5. n. An infectious disease.
6. n. Moral contamination or corruption.
7. n. Ready communication of an emotion or attitude by contact or example.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of infecting. Communication of some quality, property, or state, whether good or bad, by contact, diffusive or emanative influence, example, etc.; more especially, the communication of some taint, or noxious or pernicious quality or element, etc.; contamination; taint.
2. n. The communication of disease or of disease-germs, whether by contact with a diseased person or with morbid or noxious matter, contaminated clothing, etc., or by poisonous exhalations from any source. Compare contagion, 1.
3. n. Contamination by illegality, as in possessing contraband goods, etc.
4. n. That which infects, or by which some quality or state is communicated.
5. n. That which taints, poisons, or corrupts by communication from one to another; contaminating influence: as, the infection of error, or of an evil example.
6. n. That by which disease is or may be communicated; an infecting agency; morbific emanation or influence; virus.
7. n. In grammar, a modification of a vowel-sound by another following, whereby the first takes on the sound of the second: applied to such modification in Celtic speech. Windisch, Irish Gram. (trans.).
8. n. In biology, the hypothetical influence upon the tissues of the mother animal by the sperm of a male, such that subsequent offspring of the mother by other sires are infected with the characteristics of the first sire: a hypothesis invented to account for telegony. See telegony.

Wiktionary

1. n. pathology The act or process of infecting.
2. n. An uncontrolled growth of harmful microorganisms in a host.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of infecting.
2. n. That which infects, or causes the communicated disease; any effluvium, miasm, or pestilential matter by which an infectious disease is caused.
3. n. The state of being infected; the condition of suffering from an infectious disease; contamination by morbific particles; the result of infecting influence; a prevailing disease; epidemic.
4. n. That which taints or corrupts morally.
5. n. (Law) Contamination by illegality, as in cases of contraband goods; implication.
6. n. Sympathetic communication of like qualities or emotions; influence.
7. n. A localized area of tissue which is inflamed by growth of microorganisms.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an incident in which an infectious disease is transmitted
2. n. the pathological state resulting from the invasion of the body by pathogenic microorganisms
3. n. the communication of an attitude or emotional state among a number of people
4. n. moral corruption or contamination
5. n. (international law) illegality that taints or contaminates a ship or cargo rendering it liable to seizure
6. n. (medicine) the invasion of the body by pathogenic microorganisms and their multiplication which can lead to tissue damage and disease
7. n. (phonetics) the alteration of a speech sound under the influence of a neighboring sound