Anthrax

1. n. An infectious disease of cattle and sheep. It is ascribed to the presence of a rod-shaped bacterium (Bacillus anthracis), the spores of which constitute the contagious matter. It may be transmitted to man by inoculation. The spleen becomes greatly enlarged and filled with bacteria. Called also splenic fever.
2. n. A carbuncle.
3. n. A malignant pustule.
4. n. A microscopic, bacterial organism (Bacillus anthracis), resembling transparent rods. [See Illust. under Bacillus.]

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.