physician

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A medical doctor, especially one who treats illness with medicine rather than surgery.

   The physician examined the patient and prescribed some medicine.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Physician entered English in the early Middle Ages and goes back ultimately to Greek phusis, “nature,” the root also found in physical and physics. The older English word for a medical healer was leech.

From Middle English fisicien, from Old French fisicïen (“physician”) (modern French physicien (“physicist”)), from fisique (“art of healing”), from Latin physica (“natural science”), from Ancient Greek φυσική ἐπιστήμη (phusikḗ epistḗmē, “knowledge of nature”), from φυσικός (phusikós, “pertaining to nature”). Displaced native Middle English læche, leche, archaic English leech (“physician”). Morphologically physic + -ian.

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary