encephalitis

1. 1.

   inflammation of the brain usually caused by a virus; symptoms include headache and neck pain and drowsiness and nausea and fever (`phrenitis' is no longer in scientific use)

   Synonymscephalitisphrenitis

   Broaderinflammation

   Narroweracute hemorrhagic encephalitisequine encephalitisherpes simplex encephalitisleukoencephalitismeningoencephalitispanencephalitissleeping sicknessWest Nile encephalitis

Other forms of encephalitis

plural

encephalitides

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about encephalitis

What does encephalitis mean?

encephalitis means "inflammation of the brain usually caused by a virus; symptoms include headache and neck pain and drowsiness and nausea and fever (`phrenitis' is no longer in scientific use)".

How many syllables are in encephalitis?

encephalitis has 5 syllables: en-cep-ha-li-tis. The stress falls on "li". In IPA it is /ɛnˌsɛfəˈlaɪtəs/.

What is another word for encephalitis?

Close synonyms include cephalitis, phrenitis. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is encephalitis a common word?

encephalitis is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.