Meaning & use
non-pathogenic
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivenot comparabletechnical
Not able to cause disease in people, animals, or plants.
Grammar: Used before a noun: non-pathogenic bacteria. It has no comparative forms.
Patterns
- non-pathogenic bacteria
- a non-pathogenic strain of something
- non-pathogenic to humans
The lab works only with non-pathogenic strains of the bacterium.
These gut microbes are non-pathogenic and actually help digestion.
The soil sample contained a mix of pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi.
Common combinations
- non-pathogenic bacteria
- Non-pathogenic bacteria are widely used in food production.
- a non-pathogenic strain
- Researchers selected a non-pathogenic strain for the experiment.
- non-pathogenic to humans
- The virus is non-pathogenic to humans but deadly to birds.
- harmless and non-pathogenic
- The organism is considered harmless and non-pathogenic.
Synonyms and how they differ
- harmless
- Harmless is a general everyday word meaning 'not able to hurt anyone', while non-pathogenic is a scientific term that means specifically 'not causing disease'.
- benign
- Benign is used mainly of tumors or growths that are not cancerous; non-pathogenic is used of organisms such as bacteria and viruses.
- avirulent
- Avirulent is a technical term meaning a microbe has lost its ability to cause disease; non-pathogenic simply states that it does not cause disease at all.
Opposites
Word family
- pathogenic adjective
- Able to cause disease.
- pathogen noun
- A bacterium, virus, or other organism that causes disease.
- pathogenicity noun
- The ability of an organism to cause disease.
Commonly confused: non-pathogenic or nonpathological?
non-pathogenic vs nonpathological
Nonpathological means 'not related to disease or not caused by disease', which is a different idea from 'not able to cause disease'.
Practice
Which sentence uses non-pathogenic correctly?
Choose one answer.
Non-pathogenic means 'not able to cause disease', so a virus that does not make anyone sick fits. Option 1 contradicts the meaning because the germ causes fever, and option 3 wrongly treats the word as a feeling.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “non-pathogenic”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.