Overdiagnose

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To diagnose something more often than it actually occurs.

    "Health experts deny claims that they overdiagnose mental health conditions."

  2. 2
    To diagnose as a clinical case what is truly a subclinical case.

    "Her GP incorrectly referred her to a pulmonologist, overdiagnosing what was clearly a case of subclinical, mild allergy."

Example

More examples

"Health experts deny claims that they overdiagnose mental health conditions."

Etymology

From over- + diagnose.

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