Other forms: symptoms
A symptom is a sign, like fever or pain, that shows what illness you have. Flu symptoms, describe your symptoms, symptom-free.
Doctors draw a line the rest of us do not: a symptom is what the patient reports and a sign is what the doctor observes, so pain is a symptom and a rash is a sign. Treating symptoms is not the same as treating a cause. The Greek means a happening.
1nounsymptomA sign that shows what illness somebody has.
“A high temperature and a dry cough are common symptoms of flu.”
2nounfaultA sign that something is wrong with a thing other than the body — a machine, a plan, a society.
“The grinding noise was a symptom of a worn part in the engine.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Greek symptoma means a happening or chance event, from syn plus piptein, to fall.
Proto-Indo-European
*sem-
Ancient Greek
σύμπτωμα — a happening, accident, symptom of disease
LL.
symptoma
Medieval Latin
sinthoma
Middle English
sinthoma
English, today
symptom
Built from
From Middle English sinthoma, from Medieval Latin sinthoma, altered by LL. symptoma, from Ancient Greek σύμπτωμα (“a happening, accident, symptom of disease”), from stem of συμπίπτω (“Ι befall”), from συν- (“together”) + πίπτω (“to fall”). See also syn-, -oma, -ome.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA