vaccinia

1. 1.

   a local infection induced in humans by inoculation with the virus causing cowpox in order to confer resistance to smallpox; normally lasts three weeks and leaves a pitted scar

   Synonymsvaccinavariola vaccinevariola vacciniavariola vaccina

   Broaderinfection

   Narrowerprogressive vaccinia
2. 2.

   a viral disease of cattle causing a mild skin disease affecting the udder; formerly used to inoculate humans against smallpox

   Synonymscowpox

   Broaderanimal diseasepox

Other forms of vaccinia

plural

vaccinias·

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 vaccinia

What does vaccinia mean?

vaccinia means "a local infection induced in humans by inoculation with the virus causing cowpox in order to confer resistance to smallpox; normally lasts three weeks and leaves a pitted scar". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in vaccinia?

vaccinia has 4 syllables: vac-ci-ni-a. The stress falls on "ci". In IPA it is /vəˈtʃiniə/.

What is another word for vaccinia?

Close synonyms include vaccina, variola vaccine, variola vaccinia, variola vaccina, cowpox. 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 vaccinia a common word?

vaccinia is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.