diathesis
English
Etymology
Borrowed from New Latin diathesis, from Ancient Greek διάθεσις (diáthesis, “state, condition”), from διατίθημι (diatíthēmi, “to arrange”).
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /daɪˈaθəsɪs/
- (US) IPA(key): /daɪˈæθəsɪs/
Noun
diathesis (countable and uncountable, plural diatheses)
- (medicine) A hereditary or constitutional predisposition to a disease or other disorder.
- 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture I:
- 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 2016, p. 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?
- 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture I:
- (grammar) Voice (active or passive).
Derived terms
- phosphatic diathesis
Anagrams
- histidase