Word Direct Answers

What does "doctor" mean?

Doctor: An academical title, originally meaning a men so well versed in his department as to be qualified to teach it. Hence: One who has taken the highest degree conferred by a university or college, or has received a diploma of the highest degree; as, a doctor of divinity, of law, of medicine, of music, or of philosophy. Such diplomas may confer an honorary title only.

Additional senses

  1. 2.One duly licensed to practice medicine; a member of the medical profession; a physician. By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death Will seize the doctor too. Shak.
  2. 3.Any mechanical contrivance intended to remedy a difficulty or serve some purpose in an exigency; as, the doctor of a calico- printing machine, which is a knife to remove superfluous coloring matter; the doctor, or auxiliary engine, called also donkey engine.
  3. 4.(Zoöl.) The friar skate. [Prov. Eng.] Doctors' Commons. See under Commons. -- Doctor's stuff, physic, medicine. G. Eliot. -- Doctor fish (Zoöl.), any fish of the genus Acanthurus; the surgeon fish; -- so called from a sharp lancetlike spine on each side of the tail. Also called barber fish. See Surgeon fish.
  4. 5.To treat as a physician does; to apply remedies to; to repair; as, to doctor a sick man or a broken cart. [Colloq.]
  5. 6.To confer a doctorate upon; to make a doctor.
  6. 7.To tamper with and arrange for one's own purposes; to falsify; to adulterate; as, to doctor election returns; to doctor whisky. [Slang]
  7. 8.To practice physic. [Colloq.]

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