infective.

Capable of entering a host and initiating an infection.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• infective stage
• infective agent

On the page

The larvae reached their infective stage in the warm water.

The laboratory tested whether the recovered agent remained infective.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror. Forms: Normally non-gradable as a classification; more infective compares infection-producing capacity. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.