inoculate
English
WOTD – 12 November 2015
Alternative forms
- innoculate
Etymology
From Middle English inoculate, from Latin inoculātus, perfect passive participle of inoculō (“ingraft an eye or bud of one plant into (another), implant”), from in (“in”) + oculus (“an eye”).
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /ɪˈnɒkjuleɪt/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ɪˈnɑːkjuleɪt/
- (General Australian)
(file)
Verb
inoculate (third-person singular simple present inoculates, present participle inoculating, simple past and past participle inoculated)
- (transitive, immunology) To introduce an antigenic substance or vaccine into something (e.g. the body) or someone, such as to produce immunity to a specific disease. [from c. 1722]
- Synonyms: immunize, vaccinate, (archaic) vaccine
- 1722, John Crawford, The Case of Inoculating the Small-pox Consider'd: And Its Advantages Asserted; in a Review of Dr. Wagstaffe's Letter. Wherein Every Thing that Author Has Advanced Against It, is Fully Confuted: and Inoculation Proved a Safe, Beneficial, and Laudable Practice.:
- But you would not willingly thus give up the Cause; therefore endeavour to draw others into your Assistance, and venture to assert, that by the Account Dr. Nettleton gives, as also by the best Observation upon those who have been Inoculated in this City, scarcely a fourth part of them have had a true and genuine Small Pox.
- (transitive, by extension) To safeguard or protect something as if by inoculation.
- (Can we add an example for this sense?)
- To add one substance to another.
- Synonym: spike
- The culture medium was inoculated with selenium to investigate the rate of uptake.
- To graft by inserting buds. [from c. 1420]
- to inoculate the bud of one tree or plant into another
- to inoculate a tree
- c. 1420, anonymous, Barton Lodge, editor, On husbondrie, translation of original by Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius, published 1872:
- And in Aprill figtreen inoculate
- (figuratively) To introduce into the mind (used especially of harmful ideas or principles). [from a. 1600]
- Synonyms: imbue, implant
- to inoculate someone with treason or infidelity
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene i], line 118, page 265:
- For vertue cannot ſo innocculate our old ſtocke, but we ſhall relliſh of it.
- 1860, John Watts, The Christian Doctrine of Man's Depravity Refuted, Watts & Company, page 14:
- The Church tries to inoculate humanity with the imaginary goodness drawn down from a fabulous heaven, and from a priest-manufactured God.
Related terms
- inoculant
- inoculation
- inoculative
- inoculator
- inoculum
Translations
to provide immunity
|
to safeguard as if by inoculation
|
to add one substance to another
|
to graft by inserting buds
|
to introduce into the mind
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See also
- immunize
- vaccinate
Further reading
- inoculate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- inoculate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
Anagrams
- lotucaine
Italian
Verb
inoculate
- inflection of inoculare:
- second-person plural present indicative
- second-person plural imperative
Participle
inoculate f pl
- feminine plural of inoculato
Anagrams
- cautelino
Latin
Verb
inoculāte
- second-person plural present active imperative of inoculō