variola

1. 1.

   a highly contagious viral disease characterized by fever and weakness and skin eruption with pustules that form scabs that slough off leaving scars

   Synonymssmallpoxvariola major

   Broaderpox

   Narroweralastrim

   Partspock

Other forms of variola

plural

variolas·

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 variola

What does variola mean?

variola means "a highly contagious viral disease characterized by fever and weakness and skin eruption with pustules that form scabs that slough off leaving scars".

How many syllables are in variola?

variola has 4 syllables: va-ri-o-la. The stress falls on "ri".

What is another word for variola?

Close synonyms include smallpox, variola major. 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 variola a common word?

variola 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.