diabetes
noun
Simple meaning
A long-term illness in which the body cannot properly control the sugar level in the blood.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dyuhbeeteezSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
daɪəˈbitiz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
pathology
Diabetes mellitus; any of a group of metabolic diseases whereby a person (or other animal) has high blood sugar due to an inability to produce, or inability to metabolize, sufficient quantities of the hormone insulin.
Diabetes insipidus; any condition characterized by excessive or incontinent urine, now specifically as caused by impaired production of, or response to, the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin.
slanghumorous
Any food or beverage with a high amount of sugar.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: (pathology) Diabetes mellitus; any of a group of metabolic diseases whereby a person (or other animal) has high blood sugar due to an inability to produce, or inability to metabolize, sufficient quantities of the hormone insulin.
Used this way, diabetes is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use diabetes
- “The doctor explained that managing diabetes requires a healthy diet.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Tap the highlighted word to open its own entry.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Diabetes caused by a relative or absolute deficiency of insulin and characterized by polyuria.
A rare form of diabetes resulting from a deficiency of vasopressin (the pituitary hormone that regulates the kidneys).
Mild form of diabetes mellitus that develops gradually in adults.
Severe diabetes mellitus with an early onset.
Pathology in which iron accumulates in the tissues.
A mild form of diabetes mellitus in which there are no overt symptoms but there are abnormal responses to some diagnostic procedures.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Acidosis with an accumulation of ketone bodies.
Coma that can develop in inadequately treated cases of diabetes mellitus.
A diet designed to help control the symptoms of diabetes.
Retinopathy involving damage to the small blood vessels in the retina.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- diabeticnoun
- endocrinologynoun
- hypertensionnoun
- glucosenoun
- insulinnoun
- cardiovascularadjective
- cholesterolnoun
- endocrinenoun
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.