infected

Pluralinfecteds

1. 1
   adjective

   Carrying an infection; affected by disease-causing germs in or on the body.

   The surgeon warned that the wound would turn infected without proper cleaning.

   Veterinarians isolated the infected animals to protect the rest of the herd.

   Similarseptic, diseased, contaminated

   Oppositehealthy, uninfected

   Note

   Unlike many participles turned adjectives, this one takes degrees: a wound can grow more infected, and the worst case is the most infected. It sits before a noun (infected bodies, an infected cut) or after linking verbs such as become and turn. After be it can blur into the passive of the verb. The cut is infected describes a state, while the cut was infected by dirty water names an event.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of infect.

   The outbreak infected entire villages before doctors could arrive.

   He had infected several coworkers before he realized he was sick.

   Note

   One spelling covers both the simple past (the virus infected the town) and the participle after have or be (had infected, was infected). The verb always takes an object, and it reaches beyond germs: a person can be infected with someone's enthusiasm, and a mood can infect a room. Long before this participle settled into the adjective, infect itself served as the adjective, a use now obsolete.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A person carrying an infection; one affected by disease-causing organisms.

   Relief workers struggled to feed and shelter the infected during the crisis.

   An infected was carried into the clinic on a stretcher just before dawn.

   Similarpatient, sufferer

   Note

   A countable noun with the plural infecteds, at home in two very different settings. In epidemic modeling, Applied Calculus (2017) lets I stand for the number of infecteds. In outbreak fiction, Marcus Martin's Convulsive (2019) has infecteds picking through debris. In general writing the collective the infected is the more common choice, with no added s. Use infecteds when you need to count individuals.

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