Reovirus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Any of a family of double-stranded RNA viruses that infect the respiratory and intestinal tracts of humans and other animals while often causing only mild illness
2. A type of RNA virus, found in humans and other animals, that typically produces slight symptoms in the gut or airways
3. Members of a viral genus with segmented double-stranded RNA genomes that commonly infect mammals and birds without serious disease in most cases

Etymology: Reoviruses are a family of viruses with double-stranded RNA genomes, and the name is an acronym: "reo" stands for "respiratory enteric orphan." The name records how the first members were found. Researchers recovered these viruses from the respiratory and intestinal tracts of humans, but they were "orphans" in the sense that no disease was clearly linked to them at the time of discovery. The naming reflects a practical problem rather than a deliberate poetic choice. Scientists needed a label for a group of viruses that shared a genome structure but had no known illness to tie them together, so they built the name from the sites where the viruses turned up. The result is a short coinage whose parts each point to a fact about its discovery: where the viruses were found, and that they had no obvious disease attached to them.