Diagnoses

How to spell diagnoses

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce diagnoses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diagnoses mean?

1. nounMore than one identification of an illness or problem based on its signs.
2. verbIdentifies the nature of an illness or problem by examining its signs (he, she, or it does this).

Diagnoses in a sentence

• noun

  The clinic recorded three separate diagnoses for the same set of symptoms.

• verb

  The new software diagnoses network faults faster than the old system.

• noun

  Early diagnoses of the engine fault saved the company thousands in repairs.

• verb

  A skilled mechanic diagnoses the trouble before lifting the bonnet.

Where does diagnoses come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the Greek diagnosis, which meant 'a discerning' or 'a distinguishing', built from the verb diagignoskein, 'to tell apart' or 'to know thoroughly'. That verb joins dia-, meaning 'apart' or 'through', to gignoskein, meaning 'to know' or 'to learn', the same root that gives English 'know', 'gnostic', and 'ignore'. Greek passed it into Latin, and English adopted diagnosis in the seventeenth century as a medical term for identifying a disease by its signs. The form 'diagnoses' is simply the plural of that noun, and because the source noun ended in the Greek '-sis', its plural follows the Greek pattern '-ses' rather than adding a plain '-es' to an English stem; the same noun also produced the verb 'diagnose', whose third-person singular is likewise 'diagnoses'. The shift from the long '-ses' sound in the noun to the buzzing '-zes' sound in the verb is exactly why the single written spelling carries two pronunciations.

How the word is built

• dia- (apart, through)
• gnos- (to know, from Greek gignoskein)
• -is (noun) reshaped to plural -es / verb -es