Definition of "viroid" []

• An infectious particle, similar to but smaller than a virus, that consists solely of a strand of RNA and is capable of causing disease in plants. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Locking her arms around the doctor despite his indignant yelp, she whirled him away from the entrance and beyond the snaking grasp of one of the viroid creatures."
• ""You've got a shipload of viroid life-forms outside draining our power systems, and I've got a Trill symbiont in the infirmary who says it can help us.""
• ""What we have here isn't an Andorian who's been infected by some alien virus's DNAwe have a viroid life-form that's absorbed an Andorian's genetic code for its own selective usage.""