Other forms: doctors
A doctor is the person you visit when you are ill. See a doctor.
They help you get better, and a great deal of the job is deciding what can be left alone. A doctor in Britain is called mister again once they become a surgeon, which is a very old joke.
1noundoctorThe person you visit when you are ill; they help you get better.
“The doctor listened for four minutes and got it right.”
doctor is a person.
Latin docēre meant to teach, and a doctor was first of all a teacher — someone learned enough to instruct others. The medical sense came later. The older one survives in doctorate.
Proto-Indo-European
*deḱ-
Middle English
doctour
English, today
doctor
Built from
From Middle English doctour. From Middle English doctor, doctour (“an expert, authority on a subject”), from Anglo-Norman doctour, from Latin doctor (“teacher”), from doceō (“to teach”). Displaced native Middle English lerare (“doctor, teacher”) (from Middle English leren (“to teach, instruct”) from Old English læran (“to teach, instruct, guide”), compare Old English lārēow (“teacher, master”)). Displaced Old English lǣċe (“doctor, physician”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA