Proximate Vs. Root Cause
A proximate cause is an event which is closest to, or immediately responsible for causing, some observed result. This exists in contrast to a higher-level ultimate cause (or distal cause) which is usually thought of as the ‘real' reason something occurred.
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Origin
The origin of the terms is uncertain, but they are believed to have originated in the fields of law and philosophy, where they have been used to describe the causal relationship between events and their outcomes.