Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A nonmotile, gram-positive bacterium (Streptococcus pneumoniae) that is the most common cause of bacterial pneumonia and is a cause of meningitis and other infectious diseases.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A diplococcus which is regarded as the causative factor of acute croupous pneumonia. Also termed diplococcus pneumoniæ or Fraenkel's pneumococcus. See
diplococcus .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Biol.) A form of micrococcus found in the sputum (and elsewhere) of persons suffering with pneumonia, and thought to be the cause of this disease.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
gram-positive bacterium , Streptococcus pneumoniae, that causespneumonia and otherinfectious diseases
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun bacterium causing pneumonia in mice and humans
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Protection against pneumococcus is mediated by antibodies directed against the pneumococcal polysaccharide.
Pneumococcus Vaccine 2010
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(link) One pneumococcus is enough to spoil a party, alas.
mrissa: On the twelfth day of illness, this virus gave to me... mrissa 2010
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A bacteria called pneumococcus that accounts for about 1.5 million worldwide deaths each year on its own, is one of the most common bacterial causes of these pneumonia cases.
Dr. Orin Levine: The Low Hanging Fruit of Pandemic Flu Prevention 2009
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By studying the lungs of 77 patients that died from confirmed H1N1 flu, they were able to document the involvement of bacteria from 29% of the patients, and one bacterium, called pneumococcus, was responsible for almost half of the bacterial infections.
Dr. Orin Levine: The Low Hanging Fruit of Pandemic Flu Prevention 2009
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Pneumococcus Streptococcus pneumoniae, also known as pneumococcus, kills more than 1 million children a year around the world.
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And the extra one we want to talk about is pneumococcus, which is a dangerous bacterial infection.
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It is a tiny, inoffensive-looking little organism, of an oval or lance-head shape, which, after masquerading under as many aliases as a confidence man, has finally come to be called the pneumococcus, for short, or "lung germ."
Preventable Diseases Woods Hutchinson 1896
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China, we also developed the 24-valent PPV to cover one more serotype of pneumococcus, which is one of the top three most prevalent pneumococcus bacteria in China, and therefore has the potential to provide more extensive vaccine protection to the Chinese population.
unknown title 2011
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"Streptococcus pneumoniae, commonly known as pneumococcus, is responsible for half the cases of bacterial meningitis in humans," said the study's senior author, Victor Nizet,
THE MEDICAL NEWS 2009
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Remember, bacteria such as pneumococcus and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) can also cause meningitis.
chained_bear commented on the word pneumococcus
"Although many bacteria, viruses, and fungi can invade the lung, the single most common cause of pneumonia is the pneumococcus, a bacterium that can be either a primary or a secondary invader. (It causes approximately 95 percent of lobar pneumonias, involving one or more lobes, although a far lesser percentage of bronchopneumonias.) ... Under the microscope the pneumococcus looks like a typical streptococcus, a medium-size elliptical or round bacterium usually linked with others in a chain, although the pneumococcus usually is linked only to one other bacterium—and is sometimes called a diplococcus—like two pearls side by side. When exposed to sunlight it dies within ninety minutes, but it survives in moist sputum in a dark room for ten days. It can be found occasionally on dust particles."
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 153
February 14, 2009