Definition of "diagnosis" []

• Medicine The act or process of identifying or determining the nature and cause of a disease or injury through evaluation of patient history, examination, and review of laboratory data. (noun)
• Medicine The opinion derived from such an evaluation. (noun)
• A critical analysis of the nature of something. (noun)
• The conclusion reached by such analysis. (noun)
• Biology A brief description of the distinguishing characteristics of an organism, as for taxonomic classification. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "YOU may like an independent panel telling you that your wait for your pain diagnosis is 3-5 months."
• "The precision in diagnosis is greatly improved, and entirely new possibilities for therapy have been opened up via the hybridoma technique."
• "It is an absolute fact that some of the best shots I ever made were where neither I, nor any living man, could make what we term the diagnosis -- that is, name the disease."