pharmacist
Americannoun
-
pharmacists
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pharmacist
First recorded in 1825–35; pharmac(y) + -ist
Explanation
When you're sick and need prescription medication, it's a pharmacist who prepares it for you, answers your questions about it, and sells it to you. You can also ask your pharmacist to recommend the best over-the-counter cough drops. If you decide to be a pharmacist, you'll need to study pharmacy, a field of science that's all about making and dispensing safe medicine that works the way it's supposed to. Pharmacists take a lot of chemistry classes to understand how drugs work, and they also study human anatomy and physiology to learn about the way people's bodies react to medicine. In some places, your pharmacist can also give you vaccinations.
Vocabulary lists containing pharmacist
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -ist
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Pharmacy Words
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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.
See Examples For:
The final product—about a pharmacist in Batman’s Gotham City—remains unproduced, but the experience proved to Cregger he could write something he liked without a guaranteed paycheck.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
"The world has gone mad," pharmacist and director of 24 HR Pharmacy, Sehar Shahid says.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
Sarah Hassanbeigi, a 32-year-old pharmacist in Tehran, said: "I don't think people can really take this much longer."
From Barron's ● Aug. 24, 2026
Epstein, a pharmacist in Fort Washington, Pa., said she wasn’t looking for his approval.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
On the corner of the Lucys’ block, a pharmacist had purchased a lot with plans to open the city’s first Negro pharmacy.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
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The researchers also see an opportunity to make greater use of pharmacists as part of the healthcare team.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
“Marble Hall Murders,” in which Lesley Manville returns as book-editor/sleuth Susan Ryeland, opens with a teenage coven of druidic pharmacists mixing a noxious potion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
The USC union, United Faculty-UAW, represents roughly 2,700 non-tenure-track faculty across more than 20 schools and the USC libraries, including lecturers, researchers, clinicians, librarians and pharmacists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
With a seeming majority of opticians and pharmacists out of stock, pastry chef Arno Dossogne, 37, struck gold at a small opticians' store that received a last-minute shipment Monday afternoon.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
They were grouped by occupation and wore identifying clothing—doctors, nurses, farmers, pharmacists, housemakers, actresses, librarians, college students in academic gowns.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
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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.