"mind virus" meaning in English

See mind virus in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: mind viruses [plural]
Etymology: Literally mind + virus. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|mind|virus}} mind + virus Head templates: {{en-noun}} mind virus (plural mind viruses)
  1. A concept, belief, or message that propagates through a population by, analogized to the spread of a biological virus; a self-replicating idea or notion that spreads between individuals, typically by exploiting psychological incentives such as fear, hope, or social pressure. Synonyms: brain virus
    Sense id: en-mind_virus-en-noun-diOTr6wj Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 63 37 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 61 39 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 66 34
  2. (science fiction) A type of virus, or virus-like entity, that targets the brain, disrupting it or causing it to think in a specific way.
    Sense id: en-mind_virus-en-noun-C-7JCDuN Categories (other): Science fiction Topics: literature, media, publishing, science-fiction
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Derived forms: St Jude mind virus, woke mind virus

Inflected forms

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          "ref": "2003, Bill Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, page 80:",
          "text": "Dawkins deserves credit for looking at traditional materials from a novel perspective. But the discovery of memes and particularly of the St. Jude mind virus was new only to biologists.",
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        "(science fiction) A type of virus, or virus-like entity, that targets the brain, disrupting it or causing it to think in a specific way."
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          "text": "‘I had to kill Palmoon,’ I told him. ‘He killed Wandour and Lavault. Flayr told me, before he died, about the mind virus. I got a touch of it — it must have driven Palmoon mad.’ ‘There was no mind virus. The toy planted that idea itself, to keep you confused. ‘But Flayr told me.’ ‘He was probably already dead.’ I remembered a hole the size of a fist in the side of Flayr's head. ‘But there must have been a mind virus,’ I protested. ‘She must have slipped it to us in the drink.’",
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        "(science fiction) A type of virus, or virus-like entity, that targets the brain, disrupting it or causing it to think in a specific way."
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Download raw JSONL data for mind virus meaning in English (3.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-07-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-07-06 using wiktextract (b70b34c and e7887d5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.