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:
A sports medicine doctor says: The thinking around creatine has changed in the last two decades, says Tracy Zaslow, a Cedars-Sinai Sports Medicine specialist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 19, 2026
Canadians who sought care within the country waited an average of almost 29 weeks between seeing a primary-care provider and obtaining treatment—a 15.3-week wait to see a specialist and then 13.3 more weeks before treatment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 18, 2026
Hibbs, a blood-cancer specialist, couldn’t stop thinking about it.
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
"For many people, this was the game of their childhood," said Etienne Masson of the specialist website Nintendo-Town.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
She also had news of her own: She was ditching her job as a computer specialist at the Federal Reserve and going traveling—not for weeks, but for months.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
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
But some Medicare Advantage plans are increasing copays for specialists or switching to coinsurance, which means you pay a share of the total cost, rather than a flat amount.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
A new team of UK specialists is embarking on a 9,000-mile journey to Antarctica to protect a British science base threatened by climate change.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 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
With the crop surpluses that they could grow and store, they fed craft specialists, chiefs, and part-time soldiers.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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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.
