immune

Pluralimmunes

Formsimmunes, immuning, immuned

1. 1
   adjective

   Protected against a disease, either through vaccination or through the body's own inherited resistance to pathogens.

   Once vaccinated, most children become immune to the virus.

   Survivors of the infection are often immune to reinfection for years.

   Similarresistant, protected

   Oppositesusceptible, vulnerable, prone

   Note

   In medicine, protection is always against something named: one is immune to chicken pox, not simply immune in general. The construction is predicative and usually takes to plus the disease or pathogen. That sets it apart from the relational adjective of immune system, which stands before a noun and says nothing about whether anyone is protected.

2. 2
   adjective

   Exempt from something; not subject to a duty, rule, or effect that applies to others.

   Senators are not immune from criticism over their votes.

   The company believed it was immune to the economic downturn.

   Similarexempt, free, safe

   Oppositesubject, liable, susceptible, exposed

   Note

   Here the word stays closest to its Latin root: immūnis meant "exempt from public service," from in- "not" and mūnus "service." A diplomat immune from prosecution is excused in much that old civic way. This sense usually takes from, while the medical meaning prefers to. The line blurs, though: Michael Arlen in 1922 calls a man "remarkably immune from such little ailments."

3. 3
   adjective

   Not vulnerable; unable to be harmed or affected by something.

   Their fortress was thought to be immune to attack.

   She acts as though she is immune to embarrassment.

   Similarimpervious, invulnerable, resistant, unaffected

   Oppositevulnerable, susceptible, sensitive

   Note

   The medical idea has stretched to anything that fails to take effect. "Immune to my charms" borrows clinical language for wry effect, meaning simply unmoved. The word reaches into engineering too, where signalling apparatus can be immune to 50-cycle currents, meaning stray power does not disturb it. Like the medical meaning, it takes to.

4. 4
   adjective

   Relating to or involving the body's system of defense against infection and disease.

   The immune system identifies and destroys harmful invaders.

   Doctors studied her unusually strong immune response to the infection.

   Note

   A classifying adjective that appears before a noun: immune system, immune response, immune functions. It describes what belongs to the body's defenses, not whether those defenses succeed, since an immune response can be weak or fail. Put it after a verb, as in "the patient is immune," and it turns into the meaning "protected".

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A person who cannot be infected by a specific disease owing to natural or acquired resistance.

   Epidemiologists tracked how many immunes remained in the population after the epidemic.

   An immune can sometimes still carry and spread the pathogen to others.

   Oppositesusceptible

   Note

   Disease modeling sorts a population into groups and names each one with a noun: susceptibles, cases, immunes. In Dubos and Hirsch's Bacterial and Mycotic Infections of Man (1965), recovering cases "accumulate as immunes." The noun usually appears in the plural. Outside such work it sounds odd, and everyday English says "she is immune," using the protective adjective, rather than "she is an immune."

Showing meanings only. Show all 6