bacteriostasis

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The inhibition of growth, but not the killing, of bacteria.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun inhibition of the growth of bacteria, without outright killing of the organism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun biology Phase in which microbial organisms are prevented from undergoing further cell growth, without being actually killed.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun inhibition of the growth of bacteria