Pathologising

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of identifying or analyzing behaviors or phenomena as indicative of underlying psychological issues or disorders
2. The process of attributing abnormality to certain actions or thoughts, often to facilitate understanding or treatment
3. Classifying conditions or actions in terms of their pathological significance, frequently in medical or psychological contexts

Etymology: "Pathologising" is the present participle of "pathologise", which means to treat a condition, behaviour or trait as a disease or disorder. The verb is built from "pathology", itself formed from the Greek "pathos" (suffering, experience) and "logia" (study or discourse), so the base word is a study of disease. The "-ise" ending turns that noun into a verb meaning to make something fit the pathological model. The word's sense is best understood through that base. A pathology was originally the branch of medicine concerned with the nature of diseases, and "pathologise" carries the notion of approaching ordinary human variation through that same lens. Because the verb is an extension of a standard medical term rather than a historic coinage, its story lies more in how its meaning has been stretched than in any single origin event.

Synonyms: diagnosing, labeling, classifying, identifying, characterizing