From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbacillusba‧cil‧lus /bəˈsɪləs/ noun (plural bacilli /-laɪ/) [countable] technical HBMMIa type of bacteria. Some types of bacillus cause diseases.
Examples from the Corpus
bacillus• The vaccine - which consists of whole, dead leprosy bacilli - should induce immunity in the subjects.• Yersin was one of the workers who isolated the bacillus in 1894.• These movies have been carrying, like a sealed train, the bacillus of high art.• After the tubercle bacillus was identified, accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis, of the lungs and of other organs, became possible.• We are not likely to find a cause as precisely as the tubercle bacillus can be shown to produce tuberculosis.• Koch identified the tubercle bacillus only in 1882.• So the tubercle bacillus is a particularly difficult target for chemical attack.• Furthermore, immune responses to tubercle bacilli are extraordinarily complicated.Origin bacillus (1800-1900) Modern Latin Latin baculus “stick, rod” 