virulent
adj.adj. describing a disease that is very strong and spreads very quickly. It can also describe a person who is very angry or full of hate.
adj. characterised by extreme intensity, rapid spread, or extreme hostility. In a medical context, it describes pathogens that cause severe disease and high mortality.
The virus is highly virulent and spreads easily.
The new strain of the flu was so virulent that hospitals were overwhelmed within a week.
The politician's speech was filled with virulent rhetoric that alienated many of his former supporters and made the election much more difficult to win.
PIE word *wisós From Middle English virulent (“leaking or seeping pus, purulent; (of putrefaction) extremely severe (sense uncertain)”) [and other forms], borrowed from Latin vīrulentus (“poisonous”), from vīrus (“poison; venom; slime, slimy liquid; stinking smell; nasty taste”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“poison; slime; fluidity”)) + -ulentus (suffix meaning ‘abounding in, full of’, forming adjectives). Sense 4 (“of a pathogen: replicating within its host cell, then immediately causing it to undergo lysis”) is derived from French virulent, which was first used in this sense by the French biologist François Jacob (1920–2013) and his co-authors in a 1953 article.