pathologist

American  

[puh-thah-luh-jist] / pəˈθɑ lə dʒɪst /

noun

1. a person who studies or works in pathology.

2. a medical doctor who specializes in diagnosing diseases.

3. Also called forensic pathologist. a medical doctor whose specialty is determining why someone died by examining their body.

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Explanation

A student who is fascinated with the causes of disease and death might decide to go to medical school and become a pathologist. A medical doctor who performs autopsies to learn how patients died is a pathologist. Other pathologists trace illness back to their root causes, or diagnose diseases such as cancer. When a doctor decides to to become a pathologist, her field is called "pathology." The Greek root of both words is pathologikos, "treating of disease," which combines pathos, "suffering," with logia, "study, or the study of."

Example Sentences

Peter Nowell, a pathologist, argued in 1976 that cancers arise from a single mutant cell and then evolve, as offspring acquire new mutations and compete for dominance—a prediction that single-cell sequencing has dramatically confirmed.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 20, 2026

The pathologist added that some of the bodies appeared to have originated from hospitals and mortuaries but that would be further determined after autopsies.

From BBC • Mar. 25, 2026

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Theresa McGonigle also ordered that she not practice as a speech-language pathologist in California, where she has been licensed since 2016, while the criminal case is pending.

From Barron's • Mar. 25, 2026

And if her goofier choices were unanimously refuted as artistic inferiority, we’d never get the chance to see her bounce from “Babygirl” to “Holland” to playing an Italian forensic pathologist in “Scarpetta.”

From Salon • Mar. 22, 2026

Now there she was with a corpse, a stack of petri dishes, and the pathologist, Dr. Wilbur, who stood hunched over the autopsy table.

From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot