virulence

noun/ˈvɪrjələns/

Frequency rank: #18,761 of 20,003 in the WORDED list (wordfreq data)

Meaning

the degree to which a pathogen or harmful agent is able to cause severe disease or damage.

Illustration for the English word “virulence”

Example sentence

Scientists studied the virulence of the new strain to understand how quickly it could spread through a population.

Synonyms & related words

More words in ranks 18,701–18,800