specialist
Americannoun
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a person who is devoted to one subject or to one particular branch of a subject or pursuit.
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a medical practitioner who devotes attention to a particular class of diseases, patients, etc.
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U.S. Army. an enlisted person of one of four grades having technical or administrative duties, the grades corresponding to those of corporal through sergeant first class but not requiring the exercise of command.
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Stock Exchange. a member of an exchange who buys and sells a single stock or a particular group of stocks in their own name or for other stockbrokers and thus helps maintain the market in those securities on that exchange.
noun
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a person who specializes in or devotes himself to a particular area of activity, field of research, etc
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( as modifier )
specialist knowledge
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an enlisted rank in the US Army denoting technical qualifications that entitle the holder to a noncommissioned officer's pay
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ecology an organism that has special nutritional requirements and lives in a restricted habitat that provides these Compare generalist
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of specialist
Explanation
A specialist has an area of expertise in a profession or branch of learning. Call an ear, nose, and throat specialist if you can’t shake a stuffy nose, but go to a Shakespeare specialist to learn about King Lear. Specialist started off as a word used just for doctors who focused particular diseases or parts of the body, but now a specialist can be someone with a narrow focus in any field. A specialist is any professional with a specialty — lawyers are specialists because each lawyer deals with a specific kind of legal work. To be a specialist you have to study or get experience in a specific field for a long time.
Vocabulary lists containing specialist
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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National Nurses Week: Hospital People and Places
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Things Not Seen
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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:
Quite the contrast to Miles’s sharply disciplined wife, Kate, a specialist in the poetry of Milton and Blake and an academic star.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
All pharmacists and pharmacy technicians delivering the service have received specialist training to provide emergency contraception and wider contraceptive care.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
The larvae were sourced from Devon and introduced with the help of specialist consultants.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
That view was shared by Zhang Guobin, founder of Chinese specialist website eetrend.com.
From Barron's ● Jul. 27, 2026
Urey quarreled repeatedly with John Dunning, a Columbia colleague who was a specialist in the process.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
An established executive brings instant credibility and experience to a role, governance specialists say, even if research suggests the performance of second-act CEOs tends to be mixed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
That’s why financial advisers hire tax accountants and doctors hire specialists.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 25, 2026
But not all obesity specialists are persuaded that fasting is the right approach for children.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
Drug development specialists at the SciLifeLab Drug Discovery and Development Platform played an important role in the project.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 21, 2026
We were ushered into a mustard-colored office where Russian doctors, health specialists, and government leaders were waiting for us.
From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French
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.
