Word.ws English Dictionary

root cause

root cause noun: an initiating cause of a chain of events which leads to an outcome or effect of interest.

Noun

root cause (plural root causes)

  1. (idiomatic) An initiating cause of a chain of events which leads to an outcome or effect of interest.
    • However, the report finds that the "root cause has not yet been established".2021 September 22, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Hitachi cracks due to fatigue and corrosion”, in RAIL, number 940, page 22
    Synonyms:
    bottom

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
    • After the effect of the bug is observed using post-silicon tests, the next step is to localize the source of error, root-cause bugs, and fix them.2018, Prabhat Mishra, Farimah Farahmandi, chapter 1, in Post-Silicon Validation and Debug, Springer, →ISBN, page 13

root cause meaning in Tamil and Odia

root cause in Tamil

அடிப்படைக் காரணம், மூலகாரணம்

root cause in Odia

root cause; origin
ମୂଳ muḷa
root cause, origin
ଗୋଡ଼ goṛa

Synonyms of root cause

Forms of root cause

Noun
pluralroot causes
Verb
third-person singular presentroot causes
present participleroot causing
past participleroot caused
pastroot caused
alternative formroot-cause

Words formed from root cause

Questions about root cause

What does root cause mean?
Root cause means an initiating cause of a chain of events which leads to an outcome or effect of interest.
What is root cause in Tamil?
Root cause in Tamil is அடிப்படைக் காரணம், மூலகாரணம். See Root cause meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is root cause?
Root cause can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of root cause?
The plural of root cause is root causes.

Words near root cause in the dictionary

  1. root beers
  2. root canal
  3. root canals
  4. root cap
  5. root caps
  6. root cause
  7. root caused
  8. root causes
  9. root causing
  10. root cellar
  11. root cellared

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: root cause (page history and authors); root cause (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ଗୋଡ଼ (Odia) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-root cause.ogg.

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