Epidemic

Epidemic means a disease affecting a whole people. This means that when there is an outbreak of a disease, it spreads to a large enough degree that it afflicts many individuals in a given population. When an epidemic spreads to a large enough amount of groups of people in a large enough territory it is deemed a pandemic.
An example of an epidemic was when the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the respiratory illness COVID-19, arose it was an epidemic located in Wuhan, China. Once it spread to other areas around the globe and became an epidemic in numerous other populations, it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The word epidemic derives from Ancient Greek, where epi means "upon" and demic, refers to the word demos, meaning "people". Epidemic then began to be used, as the prevalent use today, as referring to the spread of a disease.
The correct pronunciation of epidemic in English is Eh-pih-deh-mick. Both of the "e" sounds in epidemic are pronounced with a soft "e" and not pronounced with a hard "ee" sound.

Biology and Medicine

English