diathesis

 
Pronunciation: /dʌɪˈaθəsɪs/

noun (plural diatheses /-siːz/)

  • 1 [usually with modifier] Medicine a tendency to suffer from a particular medical condition: a bleeding diathesis
  • 2 Linguistics the set of syntactic patterns with which a verb or other word is most typically associated.

Origin:

mid 17th century: modern Latin, from Greek, 'disposition', from diatithenai 'arrange'. diathesis (sense 2) dates from the mid 20th century