Word.ws English Dictionary

root-cause

root-cause is the alternative form of root cause.

Meaning of root cause

Verb

root cause (third-person singular simple present root causes, present participle root causing, simple past and past participle root caused)

  1. (transitive) To identify the cause of a chain of events which leads to an outcome or effect of interest.
    • Fishbones are a great tool for collecting, categorizing, and root-causing feedback from staff.2017, Charles Protzman, Joyce Kerpchar, George Mayzell, Leveraging Lean in Ancillary Hospital Services, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 108

See all 2 meanings of root cause

Forms of root-cause

third-person singular presentroot-causes
present participleroot-causing
past participleroot-caused
pastroot-caused

Questions about root-cause

What is root-cause the alternative form of?
Root-cause is the alternative form of root cause.

Words near root-cause in the dictionary

  1. root zones
  2. root-and-branch
  3. root-and-brancher
  4. root-and-branchers
  5. root-bound
  6. root-cause
  7. root-caused
  8. root-causes
  9. root-causing
  10. root-fallen
  11. root-hardy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: root-cause (page history and authors); root cause (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “root-cause.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/root-cause. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.