variola vaccinia
- noun
- /ˌværiˈoʊlə væˈkɪniə/
- Specialized
:
variola vaccinia
- After receiving variola vaccinia, the patient developed a small pitted scar on her arm.
Examples
-
Doctors monitored the reaction to variola vaccinia to ensure immunity against smallpox.
-
After receiving variola vaccinia, patients may develop mild symptoms.
-
The introduction of variola vaccinia was instrumental in eradicating smallpox worldwide.
-
The doctor explained that variola vaccinia helps prevent smallpox.
-
After receiving variola vaccinia, the patient developed a small pitted scar on her arm.
-
Doctors monitored the reaction to variola vaccinia to ensure immunity against smallpox.
-
The doctor explained that variola vaccinia helps prevent smallpox.
Synonyms
1
9.5
A small local skin infection after smallpox vaccination
An infection from cowpox virus given to people to protect them from smallpox
A local skin infection from cowpox given to protect against smallpox, leaving a scar
Surface Forms
Morphology
The constituents 'variola' (smallpox) and 'vaccinia' (cowpox/vaccine-related infection) provide a topical clue that the phrase concerns vaccination or a vaccine-related reaction against smallpox, so a learner who knows both terms could infer a connection to immunization. However, the precise clinical sense—an inoculation-caused local infection, typical duration, and scarring—is specialized and not fully predictable from the simple juxtaposition of the two technical nouns, making the expression only partly transparent.
Etymology
Variola vaccinia names the small local infection you get when doctors used cowpox to protect against variola, the old word for 'smallpox', and vaccinia, from Latin 'vacca' meaning 'cow'. In Edward Jenner's time doctors put a little material from a cowpox sore into a person's arm; the small sore and later pitted scar showed the person was protected, so the term came to mean that local cowpox inoculation.