morbific

English

Alternative forms

• morbifick (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle French morbifique, or its source, post-classical morbificus, from Latin morbus (“sickness”).

Adjective

morbific (comparative more morbific, superlative most morbific)

1. That causes disease; sickening, pathogenic. [from 17th c.]
   • 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society 2016, p. 240:

     He accepted that the body was a machine, mathematically understandable, but disease was the effort by nature or the soul to expel morbific matter, and physiology was the science of that struggle.

2. Pertaining to or caused by disease; diseased. [from 17th c.]