inoculate

English

WOTD – 12 November 2015

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English inoculate, from Latin inoculātus, perfect passive participle of inoculō (“ingraft an eye or bud of one plant into (another), implant”), from in (“in”) + oculus (“an eye”).

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ɪˈnɒkjuleɪt/
  • (US) IPA(key): /ɪˈnɑːkjuleɪt/

Verb

inoculate (third-person singular simple present inoculates, present participle inoculating, simple past and past participle inoculated)

  1. (transitive, immunology) To introduce an antigenic substance or vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease. [from a. 1722]
    • 1722, John Crawford, The Case of Inoculating the Small-pox Consider'd: And Its Advantages Asserted; in a Review of Dr. Wagstaffe's Letter. Wherein Every Thing that Author Has Advanced Against It, is Fully Confuted: and Inoculation Proved a Safe, Beneficial, and Laudable Practice.:
      But you would not willingly thus give up the Cause; therefore endeavour to draw others into your Assistance, and venture to assert, that by the Account Dr. Nettleton gives, as also by the best Observation upon those who have been Inoculated in this City, scarcely a fourth part of them have had a true and genuine Small Pox.
  2. (transitive, by extension) To safeguard or protect something as if by inoculation.
  3. To add one substance to another; to spike.
    The culture medium was inoculated with selenium to investigate the rate of uptake.
  4. To graft by inserting buds. [from c. 1420]
    to inoculate the bud of one tree or plant into another
    to inoculate a tree
  5. (figuratively) To introduce into the mind (used especially of harmful ideas or principles); to imbue; to implant. [from a. 1600]
    to inoculate someone with treason or infidelity
    • 1599-1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, scene 1, line 118:
      virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it

Translations

See also

Further reading

  • inoculate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • inoculate in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Anagrams

Italian

Verb

inoculate

  1. second-person plural present indicative of inoculare
  2. second-person plural imperative of inoculare
  3. feminine plural of inoculato

Anagrams

Latin

Verb

inoculāte

  1. second-person plural present active imperative of inoculō
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