Each week, Verywell explains a term from health, medicine, science, or technology.
Signsvs.Symptoms
What it means:Signsare objective things that can be seen, like a red spot on your skin or reading on a thermometer that shows you have a fever.Symptomsare subjective and describe how you feel, which includessensations like painand nausea.
Where it comes from: The word “sign” comes from the Latinsignum,which means “marker.” The term “symptom” has both Greek and Latin roots going back to the stem wordsympiptein, meaning “to befall” or “happen to.”
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Where you might see or hear it: It’s helpful to understand the difference between signs and symptoms when you are talking to a medical professional. They will listen to you talk about how you feel and make note of these reports as yoursymptomswhile observing and testing you for objectivesignsof a disease or condition.
SourcesVerywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Merriam-Webster.Medical definition of Sign.Merriam-Webster.Definition of Symptom.
Sources
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Merriam-Webster.Medical definition of Sign.Merriam-Webster.Definition of Symptom.
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Merriam-Webster.Medical definition of Sign.Merriam-Webster.Definition of Symptom.
Merriam-Webster.Medical definition of Sign.
Merriam-Webster.Definition of Symptom.
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