What does "diagnose" mean?

To determine which disease is causing a sick person's signs and symptoms; to find the diagnosis.

What is a synonym for "diagnose"?

Common synonyms include: bandage, bathe, care for, construe, cure, debug.

Pronounced //ˈdaɪ.əɡˌnoʊs//.

//ˈdaɪ.əɡˌnoʊs// verb

verb ·Uncommon ·College level

Verb

1
To determine which disease is causing a sick person's signs and symptoms; to find the diagnosis. transitive
2
determine or distinguish the nature of a problem or an illness through a diagnostic analysis wordnet
3
To determine the cause of a problem. broadly
"But in the early days of the scheme the new machines created some problems for the fitters, who found them over-complex and their faults hard to diagnose after many years' experience of small, simple steam locomotives."
4
subject to a medical analysis wordnet

"That can diagnose anything, quicker and cheaper than a doctor."

Back-formation from diagnosis. Compare also sclerose (verb).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.