1 [C,usually pl.] a very small living thing that can cause infection and disease:
Disinfectant kills germs. * Dirty hands can be a breeding ground for germs.
2 [sing.] ~ of sth an early stage of the development of sth:
Here was the germ of a brilliant idea. * The germ of the town was a single house near the river.
3 [C] (biology) the part of a plant or an animal that can develop into a new one
seealsoWHEATGERM
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for germ is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is germ a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, germ is tagged as noun.
Does germ appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — germ appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
