symptoms
Signs of illness or disease that a person experiences.
readingHealth
IELTS use
Commonly used in reading passages about diseases, diagnosis, and patient descriptions.
Examples
- The patient reported flu-like symptoms including fever and cough.
- Early symptoms of the disease are often difficult to detect.
- Knowing the symptoms can help people seek treatment sooner.
Collocations
- common symptoms
- Headache and fatigue are common symptoms of the virus.
- initial symptoms
- The initial symptoms appeared within days of infection.
- symptoms include
- Symptoms include sore throat and runny nose.
- experience symptoms
- Many patients experience mild symptoms only.
Word family
- Noun
- symptom
- Adjective
- symptomatic
Paraphrases
- signs of illness: Less formal, but acceptable in IELTS reading contexts.
- indicators of disease: More formal, used in scientific texts.
- clinical manifestations: Very formal, often in medical reading passages.
Common mistakes
- He has symptom of fever. to He has symptoms of fever.. Symptom is usually plural when referring to multiple signs.
- The symptom is common for this illness. to The symptoms are common for this illness.. Use plural unless referring to one specific symptom.
- I have some symptom. to I have some symptoms.. Use plural after 'some'.