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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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:
“The most important point is that mine warfare is a game of unknowns,” said Scott Savitz, senior engineer at Rand and specialist in naval operations and technologies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
The handover ends Tim Cook's 15-year run, replacing the operations specialist who built Apple's supply chain with the engineer who built its hardware.
From Barron's ● Aug. 31, 2026
Ambulance crews, critical care paramedics and specialist response teams are at the scene, according to South East Coast Ambulance Service.
From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026
At 1 1/8 miles, the race was shorter than Gold Phoenix prefers, and he had to beat a field that included another Del Mar specialist, Formidable Man.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
As we shall see, the prerequisites for those developments consisted of several features of human society that determined whether a society would find writing useful, and whether the society could support the necessary specialist scribes.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
The brokerage will likely win on resources with their teams of analysts and logistics specialists.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 28, 2026
Making things worse, because of low physician reimbursement rates, Medicaid patients struggle to get appointments with specialists to be diagnosed in the first place.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
The season opener against the San Francisco 49ers in Australia is looming, so McVay will hold out nearly all players assured of a roster spot, other than perhaps kicking-game specialists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
Thankfully, Phoebe's tumour was not cancerous and she is now under the care of specialists.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2026
Discoveries in the last half-dozen years, by archaeologists, geneticists, linguists, and other specialists, have enriched our understanding of this story, without changing its main outlines.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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.
