diathesis

Borrowed from New Latin diathesis, from Ancient Greek διάθεσις (diáthesis, “state, condition”), from διατίθημι (diatíthēmi, “to arrange”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /daɪˈaθəsɪs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /daɪˈæθəsɪs/

diathesis (countable and uncountable, plural diatheses)

1. (medicine) A hereditary or constitutional predisposition to a disease or other disorder.
   • 1902, William James, “Lecture I”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC:

     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?

2. (grammar) Voice (active or passive).

• phosphatic diathesis

• diathetic
• diathetical

• histidase