bacillus

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin bacillus (“little staff, wand”), diminutive of baculum (“stick, staff, walking stick”).

noun

1. Any of various rod-shaped, spore-forming aerobic bacteria in the genus Bacillus, some of which cause disease.
   'This again,' said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, 'is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera - the cholera germ.' 1895, H. G. Wells, The Stolen Bacillus
2. Any bacilliform (rod-shaped) bacterium.
3. (figurative, by extension) Something which spreads like bacterial infection.
   The “bacillus of boom or depression,” he wrote, travels freely “from country to country.” 1934 [2018], Gottfried Haberler quoted in Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 71