scientist
noun
scientist
American
[sahy-uhn-tist]
/ ˈsaɪ ən tɪst /
noun
-
scientists
plural
Scientist
1
British
/ ˈsaɪəntɪst /
noun
-
Christian Science Christ as supreme spiritual healer
-
short for Christian Scientist See Christian Scientist
scientist
2
British
/ ˈsaɪəntɪst /
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of scientist
Explanation
A scientist is a person with some kind of knowledge or expertise in any of the sciences, like biology or chemistry. See that guy in the white lab coat wearing pocket protectors and experimenting with chemicals? He’s definitely a scientist. The word science comes from the Latin, scientia, which means "knowledge." The sciences are branches of knowledge about the world that derive from repeated experiments. A scientist is any person with an interest in the sciences, from amateurs to professionals. A curious high school student interested in seeing what happens when he slips vinegar into his best friend's can of soda could be considered a kind of scientist!
Vocabulary lists containing scientist
Occupations
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"Hitching a Ride"
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"Principles of Business," Vocabulary from Chapter 4
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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:
Mark Gold, an environmental scientist who has spent more than 30 years pushing for DDT cleanup, said that the bill’s passage would be monumental.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
World Labs co-founder Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
Dr. Joseph Burgoyne is a cardiovascular scientist at King's College London whose work focuses on the molecular processes that regulate the health of the heart and blood vessels.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2026
The deal is valued at approximately $8.2 billion and will make Li, a Stanford computer science professor, chief scientist at AMD.
From Barron's ● Sep. 28, 2026
A young physicist named Edward Teller sat on a train with a fellow scientist, Otto Frisch.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
The PAC had received a $150,000 donation from a newly created LLC with a typo in its name: the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers, with no S at the end of “Scientist.”
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2026
LAUREL, Md. — Ralph Lorenz dreamed up the idea of flying a helicopter through Titan’s thick methane-laden atmosphere back in 2000 in a speculative research paper and a cover story for New Scientist magazine.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2026
Jerry Melillo, a Distinguished Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, has spent the past 37 years studying heated plots in the Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 2026
Appeared in the May 30, 2026, print edition as 'Donald Trump, Climate Scientist'.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
I’d been in the middle of dreaming that I’d won the title of All-Time Greatest Scientist after discovering the first wormhole.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Although Iñárritu’s research took him to the Arctic where he spoke to scientists, he said he didn’t want the message to be strictly about climate change.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
That could allow scientists to investigate quantum systems whose behavior cannot yet be calculated precisely, potentially including problems too difficult for classical computers.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 1, 2026
Dozens of ecotoxicologists and marine scientists are trying to fill key data gaps, and the findings so far have been one plot twist after another.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
More than 5% of the country's remaining glacier ice has disappeared in the last 12 months, which scientists say is "extraordinary".
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026
The scientists looked around, confused for a few seconds before they started to grab their things and head out.
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
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.
