Symptom

How to spell symptom

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce symptom

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does symptom mean?

1. nounA physical or mental feature that indicates a disease or condition, or a sign that something is wrong.

Symptom in a sentence

• A persistent cough was the first symptom she noticed.

• Rising staff turnover is a symptom of deeper problems at the firm.

Where does symptom come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek symptoma, which literally meant 'a happening' or 'a chance occurrence', something that befalls a person. It was built from syn-, meaning 'together', and the verb piptein, meaning 'to fall', so the original sense was of events falling together or coinciding. Greek physicians used it for the changes that fall upon a sick body alongside a disease, and that medical sense travelled through Late Latin symptoma into English in the late 1500s. The buried letters are exactly what trip writers up: the 'y' doing the work of a short 'i' sound, the silent-feeling 'p' before the 't', and the unstressed final '-tom' that the ear barely registers. Knowing that the 'p' belongs to the Greek 'falling' root (the same piptein behind words about collapse) helps anchor that easily dropped letter.

How the word is built

• sym- (from syn-: together)
• -ptom (from Greek piptein/ptoma: to fall, a befalling)