infect

Other forms of infect

past tense

infected·

present participle

infecting·

third person

infects·

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 infect

What does infect mean?

infect means "communicate a disease to". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in infect?

infect has 2 syllables: in-fect. The stress falls on "fect". In IPA it is /ˌɪnˈfɛkt/.

What is another word for infect?

Close synonyms include taint. 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.

What is the opposite of infect?

The recorded antonyms are disinfect.

Is infect a common word?

infect is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with infect?

8 words rhyme with infect. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.