contagion
/kən'teidʤən/
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Noun:
- The communication of an attitude or emotional state among a number of people: The spread of a feeling, idea, or behavior from person to person, often rapidly and without direct intention.
- The transmission of a disease by direct or indirect contact: The process by which a pathogenic microorganism is spread from one person or organism to another.
- Any disease easily transmitted by contact: A disease that is communicable or infectious.
Examples of Usage
- Noun (Emotional/Behavioral Spread):
- A contagion of fear spread through the crowd after the loud noise.
- The contagion of her laughter soon had everyone in the room smiling.
- Noun (Disease Transmission):
- The rapid contagion of the virus led to a city-wide quarantine.
- Preventing contagion requires good hygiene practices like handwashing.
- Noun (The Disease Itself):
- Cholera is a dangerous contagion that spreads through contaminated water.
Advanced Usage
- "Social contagion": The spread of behaviors, attitudes, and emotions through a group or society.
- The trend spread through the school by social contagion, with every student adopting the new style.
- "Financial contagion": (Economics) The spread of an economic crisis from one market or region to another.
- The bank's collapse led to financial contagion, affecting markets across the continent.
Variants and Related Words
- Contagious (adj): (Of a disease) spread by direct or indirect contact; (of an emotion, feeling, or attitude) likely to spread to and affect others.
- The flu is highly contagious.
- Her enthusiasm was contagious.
- Contagiousness (n): The quality of being contagious.
Synonyms
- Infection: The process of infecting or the state of being infected. (Often used interchangeably with "contagion" for diseases.)
- Transmission: The action or process of passing something from one person or place to another.
- Epidemic: A widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time. (Refers to the scale of an outbreak.)
Related Phrases
- "Fear is contagious": A phrase stating that fear can spread easily from person to person.
- In the emergency, we saw that fear is contagious, so leaders tried to remain calm.
- "To spread like a contagion": An idiom describing something (an idea, trend, or disease) that propagates very quickly and widely.
- The viral video spread like a contagion across the internet.
Noun
- the communication of an attitude or emotional state among a number of people
- a contagion of mirth
- the infection of his enthusiasm for poetry
- an incident in which an infectious disease is transmitted
- any disease easily transmitted by contact