What is the difference between the terms infectious and contagious

One way is through direct physical contact, like touching or kissing a person who has the infection. Another way is when an infectious microbe travels through the air after someone nearby sneezes or coughs.

Sometimes people get contagious diseases by touching or using something an infected person has touched or used — like sharing a straw with someone who has mono or stepping into the shower after someone who has athlete's foot. And sexually transmitted diseases STDs are spread through all types of sex — oral, anal, or vaginal. Because these diseases are non-communicable, a person with cancer or diabetes can't spread it to someone else by touching them, for instance, or through the air or water.

A communicable disease, in contrast, is one that can be spread from one organism to another, Kelly wrote, noting "This includes the spread from person to person, or animal to humans, called a zoonotic disease.

How such a disease is spread is at the heart of the technical difference between the terms communicable and infectious. Most of us probably, when we use the word communicate, think of the various ways we share thoughts, feelings, information and ideas, through talking, writing or art.

In medical and scientific terms, however, communicate can mean "to give to another, impart, transmit," a disease, also referred to as transmissible.

Pathogenic microbial agents, such as viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms are "disease-producing," the definition of pathogenic. Viruses are sometimes referred to as microbes because, like microbes, they are microscopic and can cause disease. Infectious disease happens when bad germs enter the body, spread, and make a person ill sick by affecting the way the body normally works.

While some of these diseases are very common, like the cold and flu, others today are rare, even effectively eliminated in many parts of the world. Major ways infectious diseases spread include direct contact with an infected person, animal, or their discharges, direct contact with a contaminated object, contaminated food and water or disease-carrying insects.

Some are more specific, like blood-borne pathogen, HIV or types of hepatitis, are transmitted by the blood or other body fluids. A food-borne illness, such as salmonella, is transmitted through food, an airborne disease, like tuberculosis, is spread through the air and is especially used to describe diseases spread by germs that can survive in the air for many hours. Malaria, transmitted by mosquitoes, is an insect-borne disease like Lyme disease, spread by ticks.

The sexually transmitted diseases STDs —also called venereal diseases—are transmitted through sexual contact. Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite, however it is not contagious because it's not transmitted just by being around or coming into contact with an infected person but usually by a mosquito bite, which transfers the parasite from the mosquito into the blood. Tetanus is an infectious disease, but can't be passed on by shaking hands with someone who has the infection, rather it has to enter the bloodstream through being cut or injured by a rusty nail, where the tetanus-causing bacteria breed.

Skip to content. Food poisoning, for example, is infectious but not contagious: food can be contaminated with a bacteria an infectious agent that makes you sick, but you can't give your food poisoning to someone else by shaking their hand or even giving them a kiss.

Both contagious and infectious are also used figuratively, often in much happier contexts: laughter can be contagious; someone's enthusiasm can be infectious.

While both words are used figuratively of both pleasant and unpleasant things, contagious is more often chosen for the unpleasant, as when it's grumpiness or fear that seems to be spreading.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'contagious. Send us feedback. See more words from the same century. Accessed 12 Nov. More Definitions for contagious. See the full definition for contagious in the English Language Learners Dictionary.

Nglish: Translation of contagious for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of contagious for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

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