Clinical means to do with treating patients — or coldly detached, with no feeling shown at all.
The medical sense is the plain one: clinical trials, a clinical setting, clinical staff. The second sense grew out of the first, and it captures how a hospital can feel to somebody inside it. A clinical room is bare and white; a clinical response to bad news is efficient and unwarmed. Sport uses a third sense as high praise, since a clinical finish is one taken with no fuss and no waste at all.
1adjectiverelatingRelating to the treatment of patients.
“The drug is entering clinical trials.”
2adjectiveclinicalCold, detached and without emotion.
“His account of the accident was oddly clinical.”
3adjectiveefficientEfficient and precise, especially in sport.
“It was a clinical finish from ten yards.”
French
clinique
English
clinic
English, today
clinical
Built from
From clinic + -al. clinic Borrowed from French clinique. French clinique, from Latin clīnicus (“a bed-ridden person, one baptized on a sick-bed, a physician”), from Ancient Greek κλῑνικός (“pertaining to a bed”), from κλῑ́νη (“bed”), from κλῑ́νω (“to lean, incline”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA