What does communicability mean?
Communicability is a formal noun describing how readily something can be passed from one person to another. Its most established use is medical: epidemiologists speak of a disease's communicability when measuring how easily a pathogen spreads, and the 'period of communicability' names the span during which an infected person can transmit it to others. Beyond medicine, the word also captures the quality of ideas, feelings, or information being effectively conveyed — a speaker's communicability is the ease with which an audience absorbs what they say. A third, older sense refers simply to being expressible in words. Derived from Latin communicare, 'to share or make common', the word carries no emotional charge of its own; it is neutral, precise, and at home in clinical reports, public-health guidance, and scholarly prose rather than casual conversation. For writers seeking a single term for 'the capacity to be transmitted or shared', communicability fills a gap no simpler synonym covers quite as cleanly.
nounThe quality or degree of being able to be communicated, transmitted, or shared — especially the ease with which information, ideas, or feelings can be conveyed to others, and, in medicine, the capacity of a disease to spread from one person to another.
- The capacity of a disease or pathogen to be transmitted from one person or organism to another.
- The quality of being readily communicated or shared, as of ideas, information, or feelings.
- The quality of being expressible in words; capability of being made known to others.
"The communicability of her enthusiasm made even dry statistics feel urgent and alive."
"Public health officials closely monitored the new variant's communicability before easing travel restrictions."
"The essay is admired less for its arguments than for the sheer communicability of its style."
"Doctors advised him to stay home throughout the period of communicability."
Communicability is almost always used as an uncountable mass noun; a plural form exists grammatically but is rare and generally avoided in favor of rephrasing.
"The researchers compared the communicabilities of several respiratory viruses."
Epidemiologists track a disease's 'period of communicability' — the stretch during which you can pass it on — which is why this quiet Latinate noun literally decides when you're allowed back at work.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of communicability
Communicability derives from Late Latin communicabilis, 'that can be communicated', built on communicare, 'to share, make common', which itself stems from communis, 'common, shared by all'. English adopted the word in the early modern period alongside its sibling 'communicable', and both reflect the same root that gives us community, communion, and communicate. Its strongest modern association — with the transmission of infectious disease — grew out of nineteenth-century medical usage.
Related word forms
How communicability is actually used
A formal, largely academic word. In everyday speech, speakers usually reach for phrases like 'how contagious it is' or 'how easy it is to get across' rather than 'communicability'. It appears most often in medical and epidemiological writing, where 'period of communicability' is a fixed technical term, and secondarily in discussions of rhetoric, education, and communication theory.
Easily confused with communicability
'Communicable' is an adjective meaning capable of being transmitted (as of a disease) or expressible in words, while 'communicability' is the corresponding noun denoting that quality itself.