Other forms: diagnoses
A diagnosis is the naming of an illness. The doctor listens, presses, sends you for tests, and then tells you what you have; the diagnosis is that word at the end of the appointment. Flu, a fracture, diabetes.
The plural is diagnoses. The verb is diagnose, and a person is diagnosed WITH something, while a doctor diagnoses the condition itself. The adjective is diagnostic, as in a diagnostic test or diagnostic equipment. The word travels far past medicine: a mechanic's diagnosis of a rattle, an economist's diagnosis of a slump, anywhere someone reads visible signs back to a hidden cause. Keep it apart from prognosis, because the diagnosis says what is wrong now and the prognosis says how it will go from here.
1noundiagnosisA doctor's identification of which illness or injury a person has.
“The diagnosis came back as pneumonia.”
2nounactThe act of working out the cause of any problem by reading the signs.
“His diagnosis of the company's troubles was blunt: nobody was answering the phone.”
diagnosis is a medical judgement.
The Greek is dia, through, and gignosko, to know, the same know you use every day. A diagnosis is knowing all the way through to what it is.
hooks ontoknow
From Latin diagnosis, taken from Ancient Greek diagnosis, from diagignoskein, to discern. That verb is dia, through, plus gignoskein, to know: knowing a thing right through, seeing past the symptoms to what is behind them.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵneh₃-
Ancient Greek
δῐᾰ́γνωσῐς
Latin
diagnōsis
English, today
diagnosis
Built from
From Latin diagnōsis, from Ancient Greek δῐᾰ́γνωσῐς. From Latin diagnōsis, from Ancient Greek διάγνωσις, from διαγιγνώσκω (“to discern”), from διά (“through”) + γιγνώσκω (“to know”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove, Mental Health & Wellbeing
First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word