What Does "Venereal Disease" Mean?
"Venereal disease" (often shortened to VD) is an older term for the same thing most people now call an STD or STI. You'll still hear it occasionally — often from an older relative, an old textbook, or a legal document — but it's mostly fallen out of everyday and clinical use.
Where the term came from
The word "venereal" comes from Venus, the Roman goddess associated with love and desire — so "venereal disease" literally translates to something like "disease of love." It was the standard medical and public-health term through most of the 20th century.
Why the terminology shifted
Public health organizations moved toward "sexually transmitted disease" (STD) starting in the 1970s and 80s, largely because it was more clinically precise and carried less of the moral judgment that had attached itself to "venereal disease" over the decades. More recently, "sexually transmitted infection" (STI) has become the more commonly used term in clinical settings, since "infection" more accurately describes conditions that may not cause any noticeable disease or symptoms at all — which is true of a lot of STIs most of the time.
In practice, VD, STD, and STI all refer to the same category of conditions. STD is still probably the most recognized term by the general public, which is part of why it shows up more in everyday conversation and search than the more clinically preferred STI.
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