pathologist

American  

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

noun

• pathologists
  plural

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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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• pathologists
  plural

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

See Examples For:

pathologist pathologists

The actor was born April 18, 1964, in Wichita, Kan. His mother was a nurse and his father a pathologist.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026

MCALLEN, Texas — Vanessa Ovalle has a “frontline view” of Texas schools as a single mom and a speech pathologist at a local school in McAllen, a city in the Rio Grande Valley bordering Mexico.

From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2026

Mr Marr said a pathologist concluded Mr Barton's provisional cause of death was due to head and chest injuries.

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

He said that while Valencia-Trujillo's death was "clearly very suspicious and concerning", a pathologist was unable to determine a cause of death and the force "didn't have enough evidence to get to a charge".

From BBC ● Aug. 13, 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

These meetings are designed to ensure treatment plans are reviewed and challenged by surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and cancer specialists - before major decisions, such as mastectomies, are made.

From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026

Due to the lack of pathologists, some coroners are turning to CT scanning.

From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2026

The cases were submitted by coroners, forensic pathologists, and police forces between March 2019 and August 2024.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 15, 2026

Everlab’s platform ingests and organizes documents and data from doctors, specialists and pathologists, compiling patient records that it augments with real-time data from users’ existing wearable devices.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026

The unsolved Ramsey case had inspired me to read up on the famous forensic pathologists Michael Baden and Henry Lee.

From "Confessions of a Murder Suspect" by James Patterson