specialist
Americannoun
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specialists
plural
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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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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:
And according to specialist publication Via Satellite, Eutelsat's OneWeb constellation is unable to support drone and ground robot operations because of its limited capacity and lack of compact satellite terminals.
From Barron's ● Oct. 16, 2026
Hibbs, a blood-cancer specialist, couldn’t stop thinking about it.
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
Liberty was referred to see a specialist but while the family waited for answers, she developed swelling and pain in her left breast.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
The RVC lacked a communications specialist, and Kapustin wanted Stupnikov on board.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
“Vivian seems to be something of a specialist at that.”
From "Silent To The Bone" by E.L. Konigsburg
Google-backed Promise is another Culver City-adjacent AI studio that’s a proponent of hybrid productions, where human actors work with AI specialists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2026
She likes the flexible preferred-provider organization, or PPO, design, which lets her see specialists without getting a referral from her primary-care doctor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
Despite the remaining uncertainties, researchers and medical specialists are increasingly exploring GAE as a possible option for patients who have limited alternatives.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2026
Technology, media and telecommunications specialists at JPMorgan, led by Scott Silver, wrote that the earnings report looked “somewhat light on information.”
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2026
Where specialists argue over the Ptolemaic record, it is over how deliberately and rationally—in other words, how “Greek”—the dynasty behaved in managing these challenges.
From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
