How to spell symptom

hear itsymp·tom/'sɪmptəm/nounSchwa and roots

What it means: A common indication of a condition or disease.

In a sentence: When you have a cold, a cough is a common symptom.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as simptom or symtom.

Same family: symptoms, symptomatic, asymptomatic, sign, indicator. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Symptom comes from the Greek word “symptōma,” meaning “a happening” or “chance event,” and originally referred to something that ‘fell together’ with a disease, showing that it was there. Over time, it came to mean any sign or indication that a medical condition exists.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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