Word Origin Summary

Virus is attested in Latin. Follow the ancestry chain below to trace where this term came from and how it branched into later descendants.

Ancestry Chain

1. *weizosProto-Italicinherited from
2. *wisósProto-Indo-Europeanderived from

Descendants and Related Terms

• SARSr-CoV

  Translingual · derived from

• vírus

  Hungarian · derived from

• virus corona

  Vietnamese · derived from

• coronavirus

  Vietnamese · derived from

• MERSr-CoV

  Translingual · derived from

• SARS-CoV

  Translingual · derived from

• вирусология

  Kazakh · derived from

• Virus

  Translingual · derived from

What You Can Explore

• 🗺️Geographic migration map — see where this word traveled
• 🌳Language family tree — trace connections across related languages
• 📅Historical timeline — when the word entered different languages
• 🔤Cognates — related words in other languages sharing the same root