Diagnostics

How to spell diagnostics

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce diagnostics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diagnostics mean?

1. nounThe practice or set of tests used to identify the cause of a problem, fault, or disease.

Diagnostics in a sentence

• The garage ran full engine diagnostics before quoting for the repair.

• Hospital diagnostics confirmed the infection within hours.

Where does diagnostics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek diagnostikos, meaning 'able to distinguish' or 'good at telling things apart'. That adjective grew from diagignoskein, a verb formed from dia, meaning 'through' or 'apart', and gignoskein, meaning 'to know' or 'to recognise'. The literal sense was therefore knowing something thoroughly by telling one thing from another, which is exactly what a doctor does when identifying a disease. English took 'diagnostic' in the seventeenth century in a medical context, and the plural 'diagnostics' later widened to cover the whole practice and the tools of identifying faults, especially in machines and computers. The same gignoskein root sits inside 'prognosis' and 'recognise', and that buried Greek 'gn' is the spot writers can stumble over, since the silent-feeling g is fully pronounced here.

How the word is built

• dia- (through, apart)
• gnos (to know)
• -tic (relating to)
• -s (plural/field marker)