Troubleshooted

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Identified and repaired the faults in a machine, computer system or process by investigating where the problem lay
2. Diagnosed and resolved the malfunction in equipment or a network after tracing the source of the failure
3. Tracked down and fixed the cause of a breakdown in a device, procedure or technical system

Etymology: "Troubleshooted" is the past tense and past participle of "troubleshoot," so its history belongs to that base verb. "Troubleshoot" is a back-formation from "troubleshooter," meaning that speakers first had the noun "troubleshooter" and then derived the verb from it by removing the supposed agent ending. The noun is built from "trouble" and "shooter," and the pair appears in the sense of someone who locates and repairs faults in machinery or equipment. The compound looks like a literal instruction to shoot at trouble, but the sense is figurative, since "shoot" here means to find or track down something, much as a hunter tracks game. The resulting verb is regular, so its past forms are simply "troubleshooted" and "troubleshooted," the form you see here.

Synonyms: debug, diagnose, fix