fomite

A back-formation from fomites, plural of fomes, a borrowing of medical Latin fōmes (“tinder, kindling”), used figuratively to evoke the analogy of a spreading infection to a spreading fire.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfəʊmʌɪt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈfoʊmaɪt/

fomite (plural fomites)

1. (medicine) An inanimate object capable of carrying infectious agents (such as bacteria, viruses or prions), and thus passively enabling their transmission between hosts; common examples include towels, dishcloths, kitchenware/flatware, and laundry.
   • 1859, Richard Francis Burton, “The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa...”, in Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, number 29, page 134:

     This must be an efficacious fomite of cutaneous and pectoral disease.

   • 2009, Raina M. Maier et al., Environmental Microbiology, page 559:

     Alternatively, such fluids may be transferred from soiled hands to fomites, or airborne organisms may impinge or settle onto fomite surfaces. Fomites may also serve as a site for the replication of a pathogen, as in the case of enteric bacteria in household sponges or dishcloths.

• fomes (archaic)

• “fomite, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1897.

Borrowed from Latin fōmes.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɔ.mi.te/
• Rhymes: -ɔmite
• Hyphenation: fò‧mi‧te

fomite m (plural fomiti)

1. incitement
2. cause, source
   • 1980, Umberto Eco, “Primo giorno - Sesta”, in Il nome della rosa [The Name of the Rose] (I grandi tascabili), Milan: Bompiani, published 1984, page 71:

     Egli ha insozzato la parola di Gioacchino di Calabria e ne ha fatto fomite di morte e sporcizia!

     He besmirched Gioacchino di Calabria's words and made them source of death and filth!

fōmite

1. ablative singular of fōmes