disease
part of speech
noun (a disease, diseases; disease, uncountable)
meaning for a pupil
1) A disease is an illness that affects people, animals or plants, with particular signs (symptoms). tree →
2) Disease (uncountable) is illness in general. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science and health lessons, some diseases are infectious (caused by germs, like flu, measles and chickenpox) and can spread; others are not (like diabetes). We fight disease with handwashing, clean water, healthy food, exercise and vaccines. Doctors and scientists study diseases to find cures. Plants get diseases too, like mould on leaves. Phrases: heart disease, infectious disease, catch a disease, spread disease, prevent disease.
examples
- Measles is a disease that spreads easily. tree →
- Washing your hands helps stop disease. tree →
- Vaccines protect us from some diseases. tree →
- Rats and fleas spread disease in the past. tree →
- Heart disease can be helped by exercise. tree →
- The tree had a disease that killed its leaves. tree →
note
Pronounced "di-ZEEZ". Disease is a bit more formal than illness. Not every disease is catching; you cannot catch diabetes or a broken bone. Countable for kinds (many diseases), uncountable in general (fight disease).
In the corpora
- Some hopes are big and serious: cures for diseases, help learning in any language.
- In many countries it is against the law to feed pigs kitchen leftovers, because meat scraps can spread serious pig diseases.
- It was not all good news: with the ships came diseases that killed huge numbers of the people already living in the Americas.
- "A long illness" in a death notice usually means cancer or another slow disease that killed the person.
- Ticks are tiny biters that live in long grass and woods and can spread Lyme disease.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «disease» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.