troubleshoot

UK/ˈtɹʌbl̩ˌʃuːt/US/ˈtɹʌbl̩ˌʃuːt/

verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: troubleshooting

To troubleshoot is to hunt down what is wrong with a machine, step by step. Troubleshoot the fault, troubleshooting guide, troubleshoot the network.

The method is halving: change one thing at a time and see what moves, which is what separates it from guessing. The word is a back-formation from troubleshooter, who first fixed telegraph lines.

Definitions of troubleshoot

1verbtroubleshootTo hunt down what is wrong with a machine, step by step.C1
“The technician tried to troubleshoot the printer by checking the cables one by one.”

troubleshoot is a diagnosing.

Also accepted in games: debug

Where it comes from

A back-formation from troubleshooter, originally a worker who found faults on telegraph lines.

a back-formation from troubleshooter; by surface analysis, trouble + shoot.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Technology & Internet, Repair & Damage

Practise this word

troubleshoot in the wild

GDM allows users to customize or troubleshoot settings without having to resort to a command line.
GNOME Display Manager
Remote administration is often used when it's difficult or impractical to be physically near a system in order to use it or troubleshoot it.
Remote administration
Finally, troubleshooting requires confirmation that the solution restores the product or process to its working state.
Troubleshooting
Repairing disk permissions is a troubleshooting activity commonly associated with the macOS operating system by Apple.
Repair permissions
The efficacy of repairing permissions to troubleshoot application errors has been debated.
Repair permissions

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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