Category:Doctor

Doc"tor, n. Etym: [OF. doctur, L. doctor, teacher, fr. docere to teach. See Docile.]

1. A teacher; one skilled in a profession, or branch of knowledge learned man. [Obs.] One of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Macciavel. Bacon.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. (Zoöl.)

Defn: 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.

doctor Doc"tor, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Doctored; p. pr. & vb. n. Doctoring.]

1. To treat as a physician does; to apply remedies to; to repair; as, to doctor a sick man or a broken cart. [Colloq.]

2. To confer a doctorate upon; to make a doctor.

3. To tamper with and arrange for one's own purposes; to falsify; to adulterate; as, to doctor election returns; to doctor whiskey. [Slang]

doctor Doc"tor, v. i.

Defn: To practice physic. [Colloq.]

---excerpt from the Illustrated Bible Dictionary.

Doctor - Luke 2:46; Luke 5:17; Acts 5:34), a teacher. The Jewish doctors taught and disputed in synagogues, or wherever they could find an audience. Their disciples were allowed to propose to them questions. They assumed the office without any appointment to it. The doctors of the law were principally of the sect of the Pharisees. Schools were established after the destruction of Jerusalem at Babylon and Tiberias, in which academical degrees were conferred on those who passed a certain examination. Those of the school of Tiberias were called by the title "rabbi," and those of Babylon by that of "master."