pharmacist
Americannoun
-
pharmacists
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pharmacist
First recorded in 1825–35; pharmac(y) + -ist
Explanation
When you're sick and need prescription medication, it's a pharmacist who prepares it for you, answers your questions about it, and sells it to you. You can also ask your pharmacist to recommend the best over-the-counter cough drops. If you decide to be a pharmacist, you'll need to study pharmacy, a field of science that's all about making and dispensing safe medicine that works the way it's supposed to. Pharmacists take a lot of chemistry classes to understand how drugs work, and they also study human anatomy and physiology to learn about the way people's bodies react to medicine. In some places, your pharmacist can also give you vaccinations.
Vocabulary lists containing pharmacist
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -ist
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Pharmacy Words
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Even as a teenager, he bought up foreclosed properties, borrowing $50 from the pharmacist, then the liquor store owner, until he had enough to purchase a $500 lot.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
"The world has gone mad," pharmacist and director of 24 HR Pharmacy, Sehar Shahid says.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
Sarah Hassanbeigi, a 32-year-old pharmacist in Tehran, said: "I don't think people can really take this much longer."
From Barron's ● Aug. 24, 2026
But once she and her girlfriends were inside, they took their time shopping and asking for recommendations from the pharmacist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
You needed medicine and weren’t well enough to get to the pharmacist?
From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline
In June, about 70% of voting non-tenure-track faculty approved unionizing under United Faculty-UAW, which seeks to represent roughly 2,700 USC lecturers, researchers, clinicians, librarians and pharmacists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026
More directly involving pharmacists in prescribing decisions alongside physicians could help uncover medication patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
With a seeming majority of opticians and pharmacists out of stock, pastry chef Arno Dossogne, 37, struck gold at a small opticians' store that received a last-minute shipment Monday afternoon.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
At the hearing, committee members—including pharmacists, doctors, clinic owners, academics and regulatory experts—evaluated each peptide.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
They were grouped by occupation and wore identifying clothing—doctors, nurses, farmers, pharmacists, housemakers, actresses, librarians, college students in academic gowns.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
