physician
Americannoun
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a person who is legally qualified to practice medicine; doctor of medicine.
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a person engaged in general medical practice, as distinguished from one specializing in surgery.
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a person who is skilled in the art of healing.
noun
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a person legally qualified to practise medicine, esp one specializing in areas of treatment other than surgery; doctor of medicine
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archaic any person who treats diseases; healer
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of physician
1175–1225; physic + -ian ( see -ician); replacing Middle English fisicien < Old French
Explanation
A physician is a doctor. If you wake up and your eyes are red, your skin is yellow, and your tongue is swollen, find a physician, soon! When we use the word physician, we typically mean a doctor that practices general healing, as opposed to a surgeon. Physician is a very old word, coming from both Greek and Latin roots for physic, meaning "natural science and medicine."
Vocabulary lists containing physician
Occupations
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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:
According to the police report, officers told a physician at the hospital, Dr Aryan Toosi, that they had seen signs of life.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
Over time, “he just won me over,” said Ly, 34, a physician in the Bay Area.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
Kerlis Artigas, 30, is a physician who came from another state as part of the "Pink Brigade," a team of medical specialists and students caring for the injured and donating much-needed medication.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
That dichotomy proved controversial because it left certain programs, like graduate-level training for nurses and physician assistants, out of the group of professions eligible for the higher limits.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 1, 2026
She was headlong in love with her young physician and thus in love with all that he did.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
By producing clearer images more quickly, the new antenna could shorten scan times while giving physicians greater confidence in their diagnoses.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 10, 2026
Johnson used advertisements in print and television to show Black Americans in roles they weren’t typically seen in the media: politicians, physicians, flight attendants and professors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Other physicians argued that even an under-utilized break was better for athletes than nothing at all.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2026
The KBV, a national association representing statutory health insurance physicians, said that it "bordered on madness" to force thousands of people to visit doctors' surgeries simply to fill in forms.
From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026
Some physicians said there was nothing inevitable about Garfield's death from the bullet wound.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
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.
