virulence

Other forms of virulence

plural

virulences·

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 virulence

What does virulence mean?

virulence means "extreme harmfulness (as the capacity of a microorganism to cause disease)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in virulence?

virulence has 3 syllables: vir-u-lence. The stress falls on "vir". In IPA it is /ˈvɪɹələns/.

What is another word for virulence?

Close synonyms include virulency, virulency. 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 virulence a common word?

virulence 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.