Skip to content
Allin

bacteria

nounnounnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//bakˈtɪə̯.ri.ə//
  • United States//bækˈtɪɹ.i.ə//

A type, species, or strain of bacterium.

noun

  1. 1

    Also a form of bacteriumplural of bacterium

Etymology

Etymology tree Ancient Greek βακτηρία (baktēría) Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Ancient Greek -ῐος (-ĭos)? Ancient Greek -ιον (-ion) Ancient Greek βακτήριον (baktḗrion)bor. New Latin bactēriabor. English bacteria Borrowed from New Latin bacteria, plural of bactērium, from Ancient Greek βακτήριον (baktḗrion, “little rod”); by surface analysis, bacteri(um) + -a.

noun

  1. 1

    A type, species, or strain of bacterium.

    Anaerobic bacteria function in the absence of oxygen, where as aerobic bacteria require sunlight and also oxygen. Both these bacterias are capable of breaking down the organic matter […]

  2. 2

    slangLowlife, slob (could be treated as plural or singular).

  3. 3

    Variant of bacteriumAlternative form of bacterium.

noun

  1. 1

    datedAn oval bacterium, as distinguished from a spherical coccus or rod-shaped bacillus.

Etymology

From New Latin bactēria, from Ancient Greek βακτηρίᾱ (baktēríā, “rod, stick”).

Forms

plural
bacterias, bacteriae
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).