Diagnosis

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /daɪəɡˈnəʊsɪs/

Definitions

1. The identification of a disease or condition through examination of symptoms and medical tests
2. The process of determining the nature of a medical condition based on analysis of patient-reported symptoms and diagnostic tests
3. The act of recognizing a specific illness or disorder by evaluating clinical signs and laboratory data

Etymology: The word has an unusually clean Greek pedigree: its parts are "dia", meaning "through", and "gignōskein", meaning "to know" or "to discern". Put together, the Greek "diagignōskein" meant to discern something by looking through it, distinguishing one thing from another. From that verb came "diagnōsis", a noun for the act of discernment. The Romans borrowed the Greek noun as "diagnōsis" in Latin, and English later took it from Latin. Its original sense was broad: judgment or discernment in general, not specifically medical. The narrowing to the identification of disease happened in medical language, where a physician's job was precisely to tell one condition apart from another. In English, the word still carries that original logic. A diagnosis is not simply a name for an illness but the result of sorting the signs of a body into the right category, which is exactly what "discerning through" implies.

Synonyms: identification, determination, analysis, evaluation, finding

Antonyms: ignorance, confusion, misdiagnosis, uncertainty