Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The branch of medicine that deals with the study of the causes, distribution, and control of disease in populations.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The science of epidemics; the sum of human knowledge concerning epidemic diseases.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) That branch of medicine which studies the incidence and distribution of disease in a population, and uses such information to find the causes, modes of transmission, and methods for control of disease.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun sciences The branch of a science dealing with the spread and control of diseases, computer viruses, concepts etc. throughout populations or systems.
  • noun sciences The epidemiological body of knowledge about a particular thing.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the branch of medical science dealing with the transmission and control of disease

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Medieval Latin epidēmia, an epidemic; see epidemic + –logy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin epidemia + οlogy, from Ancient Greek επιδημία (epidemia) + λόγος (logos), from επί (upon) and δήμος (people) (disease upon people and theory). See also epidemic.

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  • According to Chris Cole in Wordplay, the shortest seven-syllable word.

    June 1, 2008