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syndrome

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈsɪndɹəʊm//
  • United Kingdom//-dɹəm//
  • United States//ˈsɪndɹoʊm//
  • United States//-dɹəm//

A recognizable pattern of signs, symptoms and/or behaviours, especially of a disease or medical or psychological condition.

noun

  1. 1

    A recognizable pattern of signs, symptoms and/or behaviours, especially of a disease or medical or psychological condition.

    Down syndrome; acquired immune deficiency syndrome; restless-leg syndrome; battered-wife syndrome

    A “zone of rarity” emerges when symptoms cluster neatly into syndromes and interforms are uncommon, although not altogether absent. Fuzzy boundaries and interforms are a special problem for PTSD […]

    Bats host many high-profile viruses that can infect humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and Ebola. A recent study explored the ecological variables that may contribute to bats’ propensity to harbor such zoonotic diseases by comparing them with another order of common reservoir hosts: rodents.

  2. 2

    Any set of characteristics regarded as identifying a certain type, condition, etc., usually adverse.

    not-in-my-backyard syndrome; tip-of-the-tongue syndrome

    My roommate, Tony, and I were sitting in our living room on a Saturday afternoon trying to decide what to do that night. You know the syndrome: Saturday night when everyone is supposed to do something exciting and have a great time. If you don't, you're likely to wake up on Sunday morning feeling weird and lonely.

    Fledgling superstar Jimmy Carson couldn't bear another day in Edmonton living in the void created by the departure of Wayne Gretzky, whose brokenhearted fans never accepted his replacement. It was very difficult for me to play in Edmonton in the whole Gretzky syndrome," Carson said Thurs day after a six-player trade ...

Etymology

Learned borrowing from New Latin syndrome, from Ancient Greek συνδρομή (sundromḗ, “concurrence of symptoms, concourse”), from σύνδρομος (súndromos, “running together”), from συν- (sun-, “with”) + δρόμος (drómos, “running, course”).

Forms

plural
syndromes
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).