The dictionary states the definition as âin a literal way or senseâ but adds that, informally, it can be âused for emphasis rather than being actually trueâ such as âwe were literally killing ourselves laughingâ. The definition was added in the September 2011 edition, but went unnoticed until this week.
Strictly speaking, it is not AIDS but HIV that spreads through blood, semen and from a mother to child. Mosquitoes cannot transmit HIV for two reasons. Firstly, when the mosquito bites with its probosis, it draws blood and injects saliva, which contains antiviral factors and immunoglobulins and hence cannot transmit HIV. The blood from one person is not injected into the mosquito's next victim.
Blood left on the sloppy mosquitoâs mouth is highly unlikely to have any HIV in it. If the mosquito bit someone with 1,000 viruses per milliliter, for example, there would be a 1 in 10 million chance of injecting just one virus body into another victim. By now, scientists have a clear understanding of the ways HIV is spread, and insects are not one of them.