Zymotic

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /zaɪˈmɒtɪk/

Definitions

1. Relating to or caused by fermentation or infectious disease processes
2. Connected with diseases originating from microbial infection or fermentation activity
3. Referring to conditions caused by biological fermentation or infectious agents

Etymology: Long before germs were known, English doctors used "zymotic" for a whole class of diseases they believed spread like fermentation spreads through a vat. The Greek root "zumoun" means "to ferment," and the adjective "zumōtikos" meant "causing fermentation," a sense that English kept for its technical uses. In the medical sense, "zymotic" was applied to epidemic illnesses such as smallpox, typhus, and cholera, which were thought to multiply within the body in much the way yeast multiplies in dough or beer. The word belongs to the same family of thinking as "enzyme," a later coinage from the Greek "zumē" (leaven), and it reflects the nineteenth-century idea that disease was a kind of internal chemical process. Once germ theory took hold, the term fell out of use, though it survives in older medical writing and reference works. The adjective therefore records a stage in medical understanding, when fermentation was the best available model for contagion.

Synonyms: infectious, contagious

Antonyms: noninfectious, innocuous