Noun: germ
Sample Sentences
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surgical removal of germs of wisdom teeth
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'This again,' said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, 'is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera - the cholera germ.' [1895, H. G. Wells, The Stolen Bacillus:]
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the germ of civil liberty
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Now all his ponderings, however excursive, wheeled round Isabel as their center; and back to her they came again from every excursion; and again derived some new, small germs for wonderment. [1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:]
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What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth? - the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. [1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 194:]
Nouns inflected like germ
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle French germe, from Latin germen (“bud, seed, embryo”). Doublet of germen. See: Latin Nouns '
germen'.