geologist
Americannoun
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.
The books themselves were both 1836 works about fossils, written by geologist Reverend William Buckland.
From BBC • Mar. 1, 2026
"This thickened, heated crust may have made the region mechanically weaker, so that the plate boundary preferentially shifted here," explains co-author PD Dr. Jörg Geldmacher, marine geologist at GEOMAR.
From Science Daily • Feb. 23, 2026
The author documents Tennyson’s reaction to books by the geologist Charles Lyell, the computer pioneer Charles Babbage and the astronomer John Herschel.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026
Two of the men are engineers and one is a geologist, according to local media.
From Barron's • Feb. 9, 2026
A good case could be made that he was the most influential geologist of the twentieth century.
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.
