Synonyms for germs
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR GERMS
These germs, brought from Venus, were the only cure for the terrible disease.
There were also the germs of two more, one at Providence and the other on Rhode Island.
No doubt there were germs in the early Iranian religion of a priestly system.
This is a surgical dressing which has been so treated that it is free from germs.
At every act of swallowing, germs are carried into the stomach.
If we were the patients we should make a small charge for the loan of the germs.
Bugs and germs and things like that: they're interesting to us: some of them are too interesting.
But, in the end, it was General Botha who cleared out the Germs.
And God's possibilities for these germs of Spirit-life are not bound by time.
Other germs, quite as dangerous, find their way into milk in numerous ways.
WORD ORIGIN
mid-15c., "bud, sprout;" 1640s, "rudiment of a new organism in an existing one," from Middle French germe "germ (of egg); bud, seed, fruit; offering," from Latin germen (genitive germinis) "sprout, bud," perhaps from PIE root *gen- "to beget, bear" (see genus). The older sense is preserved in wheat germ and germ of an idea; sense of "seed of a disease" first recorded 1803; that of "harmful microorganism" dates from 1871. Germ warfare recorded from 1920.