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diathesis. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
Borrowed from New Latin diathesis, from Ancient Greek διάθεσις (diáthesis, “state, condition”), from διατίθημι (diatíthēmi, “to arrange”).
Pronunciation
Noun
diathesis (countable and uncountable, plural diatheses)
- (medicine) A hereditary or constitutional predisposition to a disease or other disorder.
1902, William James, “Lecture I”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience , London: Longmans, Green & Co.:Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. […] All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.
1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 611:When a coal miner developed the eye disease nystagmus, was this to be diagnosed as due to work conditions or to an inherent constitutional diathesis?
- (grammar) Voice (active or passive).
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