How to Use wild type in a Sentence

wild type

noun
  • Variant or wild type, hospitalized or not, the shots just work.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 7 Sep. 2021
  • Right off the bat, the wild type of Aralia cordata would seem to be in serious trouble.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 17 Apr. 2020
  • All subjects showed weaker immunity to the variants compared to the wild type.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 7 Sep. 2021
  • Viruses that have the same collection of mutations are then given names to distinguish them from the wild type.
    — Tara C. Smith, SELF, 21 Jan. 2021
  • Using a particular sequence of antibiotics can lead back to the wild type, 0000.
    — Sarah Lewin Frasier, Scientific American, 26 May 2015
  • The new variants could infect a greater number of people than the original wild type of the virus, which might infect only people who had never been infected before.
    — David Welch, Quartz, 18 Feb. 2021
  • There is no strong evidence to suggest that any of these new variants is more deadly than the wild type, but researchers are worried about the risk of one or more of them evading existing vaccines.
    — The Economist, 6 Feb. 2021
  • Tomasz is certainly a representative of their dark-and-wild type, toned down just slightly for The Hater’s more realistic setting.
    — Emma Grey Ellis, Wired, 30 July 2020
  • But in recent months, several new variants of the original virus (also called the wild type) have been spotted that appear to cause major changes in the way the pathogen acts, including alterations to its contagiousness.
    — Sara Reardon, Scientific American, 29 Jan. 2021
  • The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has rid the world of types 2 and 3 wild type polioviruses.
    — Helen Branswell, STAT, 28 July 2022
  • Once out of every several million doses, the weakened virus reverted to the neurovirulence of the wild type, destroying those motor neurons and causing polio paralysis.
    — Maryn McKenna, WIRED, 24 Aug. 2022
  • The virus found in Coeur d’Alene’s wastewater is a wild type, a label used to distinguish between measles that is naturally occurring and the diminished form of measles in the vaccine, Hahn explained.
    — Angela Palermo, Idaho Statesman, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Preliminary studies have also indicated that omicron tends to cause milder disease than the coronavirus wild type and other variants, though experts have warned that its highly transmissible nature still poses a risk to health care systems globally.
    — Washington Post, 31 Dec. 2021
  • Furthermore, cVDPV can spread just as easily as the wild type, and communities with low vaccination rates and waning immunity are especially susceptible.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 28 June 2022
  • From a social behavior standpoint, as Sanjuán and his colleagues pointed out in their paper, the wild-type VSV’s suppression of interferon qualifies as an altruistic act because in effect the wild type sacrifices itself for the cheater.
    — Quanta Magazine, 15 Apr. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wild type.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: