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

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

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

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

A pathologist also identified that sepsis was a factor in his death, "although evidence of any infection could not be found".

From BBC • Mar. 16, 2026

In December 1971, when Jones and his colleagues published their tribute to Gey in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, they reported that the original pathologist had “misinterpreted” and “mislabeled” Henrietta’s cancer.

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