virulent

Meaning

Adjective

• Of animals, plants, or substances: extremely venomous or poisonous.
• Extremely hostile or malicious; intensely acrimonious.
• Of a disease or disease-causing agent: malignant, able to cause damage to the host.
• Of a pathogen: replicating within its host cell, then immediately causing it to undergo lysis.

Origin

• Sense 4 (“of a pathogen: replicating within its host cell, then immediately causing it to undergo lysis”) is derived from French virulent, which was first used in this sense by the French biologist François Jacob (1920–2013) and his co-authors in a 1953 article.