A rod-shaped bacterium, especially one belonging to the genus Bacillus, which includes species that cause serious diseases.
From Latin bacillus, meaning 'small rod' or 'wand,' diminutive of baculum ('stick'). Naturalists used the shape of bacteria as the basis for their scientific names.
The bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis has shaped human history more than most bacteria—it killed roughly one in seven people in the 1800s and drove entire literary movements.
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