The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
INFECTIOUS
Definition of INFECTIOUS
adjective
Caused by an agent that enters the host's body (such as a bacterium, virus, parasite, or prion); often, also, transmitted among hosts via any of various routes (for example, contact, droplet-borne, airborne, waterborne, foodborne, fomite-borne, or bloodborne).
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
Borrowed from New Latin īnfectiōsus. By surface analysis, infect + -ious.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Latin
- English
One recorded step before English.
Deepest traced root
1st
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
30.6%
of traced words share this origin (25,330)
branch · 30.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, INFECTIOUS · 1 relative in the game
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
INFECTIOUS in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 32 boards so far. 84 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 14, 3 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 165, 1 November 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 1 day.
First found by a player on Day 14, 3 June 2026.
Built from these letters
INFECTIOUS starts with I and ends with S. Sorted, its letters read CEFIINOSTU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. I appears more than once.
Words that start INFECT
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 14
Could you have found INFECTIOUS?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 14 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER