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

She performs post-mortem examinations in Sheffield on children from as far away as Kent, Newcastle and the West Midlands, with bodies sometimes arriving a month later because "coroners have been trying to find a pathologist".

From BBC • May 29, 2026

Coroner Simon Cooper found that the "now-dead forensic pathologist Dr Royal Cummings was the person who provided the large majority of coronial specimens to the museum".

From BBC • May 19, 2026

“It’s probably the perfect storm of a contagion coming into the right contact for a confined group,” said Jeffrey SoRelle, a pathologist at the University of Texas Southwestern whose lab researches viral genomics.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 6, 2026

Ortiz, who is a licensed speech pathologist in Florida and California, remains jailed in lieu of $1.8 million.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 25, 2026

The pathologist subsequently performed an autopsy at the Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory in Mobile.

From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson