root cause

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root cause (plural root causes)

1. (idiomatic) An initiating cause of a chain of events which leads to an outcome or effect of interest.
   • 2021 September 22, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Hitachi cracks due to fatigue and corrosion”, in RAIL, number 940, page 22:

     However, the report finds that the "root cause has not yet been established".

• RCA

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

1. (transitive) The action of identifying the cause of a chain of events which leads to an outcome or effect of interest. To root cause something's root cause does not necessarily imply the use of root cause analysis (RCA).
   • 2017, Charles Protzman, Joyce Kerpchar, George Mayzell, Leveraging Lean in Ancillary Hospital Services, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 108:

     Fishbones are a great tool for collecting, categorizing, and root-causing feedback from staff.

   • 2018, Prabhat Mishra, Farimah Farahmandi, chapter 1, in Post-Silicon Validation and Debug, Springer, →ISBN, page 13:

     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.

• root-cause