geologist
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of geologist
Explanation
If you’re fascinated by rocks and spend hours digging for interesting samples in the backyard, you might be a budding geologist, a scientist who studies all things related to the Earth. A geologist is an expert in the field of geology, the study of what the Earth is made of and how it was formed. The woman on TV explaining the history of an active volcano that’s ready to erupt? She’s probably a geologist who specializes in volcanoes. Geologists can specialize in many different aspects of the field, ranging from earthquakes to soil erosion. What they all have in common is that they’re trying to figure out how the Earth works.
Vocabulary lists containing geologist
Occupations
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Earth Science - Middle School
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The Origins of Civilization, Lessons 1–2
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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:
“To a geologist, this is not at all surprising.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
Toby and Daniel Rice are both Rice Investment operating partners, while their brothers Derek, a geologist, and Ryan, a petroleum reservoir engineer, work on the firm’s technical and administrative team, according to the presentation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 2026
The books themselves were both 1836 works about fossils, written by geologist Reverend William Buckland.
From BBC ● Mar. 1, 2026
The search began in 2019 in the Sahara Desert, where French geologist Hugues Faure had said he found a tooth belonging to the giant predator Carcharodontosaurus in the 1950s.
From Barron's ● Feb. 27, 2026
It was Arthur Holmes, the English geologist who did so much to determine the age of the Earth, who suggested a possible way.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
The archive brings together surveys conducted by Belgian geologists as well as files from mining companies that operated in the vast African country before independence in 1960.
From Barron's ● Jul. 3, 2026
More recently, however, geologists have identified a number of smaller secondary faults connected to the system.
From Science Daily ● May 19, 2026
Today's North Sea is what geologists call a mature and declining basin.
From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2026
No, it’s not a volcano, and while firefighters often refer to the spot as a “natural solfatara,” geologists say that isn’t quite right either.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2026
It is not too much to say that geologists wouldn’t grasp the full implications of this thought for two hundred years, when finally they adopted plate tectonics.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
