Glossary
chronic
Chronic describes a condition that persists over a long period or recurs, as distinct from one that is severe.
Chronic describes duration: a condition that has lasted, or is expected to last, a long time, or that keeps coming back. It is the opposite of acute, and it is not a synonym for severe — chronic pain can be moderate, and a severe illness can be brief. Two traps follow. A chronic condition may still have acute flare-ups, so a sentence can be about both at once. And the exam often pairs the word with a distractor built on intensity (chronic offered as the meaning of serious), which is wrong on the time axis. Read the sentence for evidence of how long the problem has run.
Taught in
Related terms
- acute — Acute describes a condition that begins quickly and is expected to be short-lived, which is a statement about time and not about severity.
- context clue — A context clue is information in the sentence around an unknown word that narrows what the word means — a definition, a restatement, a contrast, an example, a consequence or the general sense.
Source: MedlinePlus (US National Library of Medicine) consumer guidance on understanding medical words, which the vocabulary guide follows for the prefix, root, suffix and combining-vowel system. US federal government material, not subject to copyright in the United States. Every definition and example above was written for this course in our own words; no dictionary or glossary text is reproduced. (MedlinePlus accessed 2026-10-27; definitions written 2026-10-27)