different between doctor vs who

English

Alternative forms

• doctour (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English doctor (“an expert, authority on a subject”), doctour, from Anglo-Norman doctour, from Latin doctor (“teacher”), from doce? (“I teach”). Displaced native Middle English lerare (“doctor, teacher”) (from Middle English leren (“to teach, instruct”) from Old English l?ran, l?ran (“to teach, instruct, guide”), compare Old English l?r?ow (“teacher, master”)). Displaced Old English l??e (“doctor, physician”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?d?kt?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?d?kt?/
• (General Australian, General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /?d?kt?/, /?d?kt?/
• Rhymes: -?kt?(?)
• Hyphenation: doc?tor

Noun

doctor (plural doctors)

1. A physician; a member of the medical profession; one who is trained and licensed to heal the sick or injured. The final examination and qualification may award a doctor degree in which case the post-nominal letters are D.O., DPM, M.D., DMD, DDS, in the US or MBBS in the UK.

   If you still feel unwell tomorrow, see your doctor.
2. A person who has attained a doctorate, such as a Ph.D. or Th.D. or one of many other terminal degrees conferred by a college or university.
3. A veterinarian; a medical practitioner who treats non-human animals.
4. A nickname for a person who has special knowledge or talents to manipulate or arrange transactions.
5. (obsolete) A teacher; one skilled in a profession or a branch of knowledge; a learned man.
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature

     one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Macciavel

6. (dated) Any mechanical contrivance intended to remedy a difficulty or serve some purpose in an exigency.

   the doctor of a calico-printing machine, which is a knife to remove superfluous colouring matter

   the doctor, or auxiliary engine, also called "donkey engine"
7. A fish, the friar skate.
8. (obsolete, nautical, slang) A ship's cook.
   • 1844, William Robert Wilde, Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe and Along the Shores of the Mediterranean (page 124)

     […] old Scotch Jem the boatswain, tunes his fiddle, and the doctor, (ship's cook,) produces his tambourine; the men dance on deck, […]

   • 1881, The United Service (volume 5, page 212)

     His galley is small, and, microscopic as it is, it is shared by his brother in misery, the ship's cook, he whom the crew familiarly know as the “Doctor.”

Usage notes

• Doctor is capitalized when used as a title:

  Doctor Smith

• In the UK and Commonwealth a surgeon (including a dental or veterinary surgeon) is commonly addressed as Mr./Ms./Mrs. rather than Doctor, even if holding a doctor's degree.

Synonyms

• (physician): doc (informal), family doctor, general practitioner, GP (UK), medic, physician, sawbones (slang), surgeon (who undertakes surgery); see also Thesaurus:physician
• (veterinarian): vet, veterinarian, veterinary, veterinary surgeon

Derived terms

See also Types of academic doctor below

Related terms

• doctrix

Descendants

Translations

Verb

doctor (third-person singular simple present doctors, present participle doctoring, simple past and past participle doctored)

1. (transitive) To act as a medical doctor to.

   Her children doctored her back to health.

2. (intransitive, humorous) To act as a medical doctor.
   • 2017, "Do No Harm", season 8, episode 2 of Adventure Time

     Doctor Princess: Put this on. [gives her lab coat to Finn] OK, you're a doctor now. Good luck.

     Finn: Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait! I don't know how to doctor!

3. (transitive) To make (someone) into an (academic) doctor; to confer a doctorate upon.
4. (transitive) To physically alter (medically or surgically) a living being in order to change growth or behavior.

   They doctored their apple trees by vigorous pruning, and now the dwarfed trees are easier to pick.

   We may legally doctor a pet to reduce its libido.

5. (transitive) To genetically alter an extant species.

   Mendel's discoveries showed how the evolution of a species may be doctored.

6. (transitive) To alter or make obscure, as with the intention to deceive, especially a document.

   To doctor the signature of an instrument with intent to defraud is an example of forgery.

7. (intransitive, obsolete) To take medicine.

Translations

See also

• doctorand
• Wikipedia article on doctorates
• surgeon

Asturian

Noun

doctor m (plural doctores)

1. doctor (person who has attained a doctorate)

Catalan

Etymology

From Latin doctor.

Noun

doctor m (plural doctors, feminine doctora)

1. doctor

Related terms

• doctoral
• doctorat

Further reading

• “doctor” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “doctor” in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana.
• “doctor” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “doctor” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch doctor, from Latin doctor (“teacher, instructor”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d?k.t?r/
• Hyphenation: doc?tor
• Rhymes: -?kt?r

Noun

doctor m (plural doctoren or doctors, diminutive doctortje n)

1. doctor (person who has attained a doctorate)

Synonyms

• dr.

Related terms

• doctorandus

Descendants

• Afrikaans: doktor
• ? Indonesian: doktor

See also

• dokter

Latin

Etymology

From doce? (“I teach”) +? -tor.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /?dok.tor/, [?d??kt??r]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /?dok.tor/, [?d??kt??r]

Noun

doctor m (genitive doct?ris, feminine doctr?x or doctorissa); third declension

1. teacher, instructor
2. (Ecclesiastical Latin) catechist

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Derived terms

• doct?r? (Mediaeval)
• doctr?na

Related terms

Descendants

Borrowed terms

References

• doctor in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• doctor in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• doctor in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• doctor in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• doctor in Ramminger, Johann (accessed 16 July 2016) Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700?^[1], pre-publication website, 2005-2016

Romanian

Alternative forms

• doftor (popular)
• ?????? (post-1930s (Moldavian) Cyrillic spelling)

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin doctor (17th c.), via French docteur or German Doktor.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ ?dok.tor ]

Noun

doctor m (plural doctori, feminine equivalent doctori?? or (nonstandard) doctor?)

1. doctor

Declension

See also

• medic

Spanish

Alternative forms

• Dr., dostor, dotor

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin doctor.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /do??to?/, [d?o???t?o?]

Noun

doctor m (plural doctores, feminine doctora, feminine plural doctoras)

1. doctor (Ph.D.)
2. physician

   Synonym: médico

Related terms

• doctorado
• doctorante

Descendants

• ? Tagalog: doktor
• ? Yaqui: takter

English

Etymology

From Middle English who, hwo, huo, wha, hwoa, hwa, from Old English hw? (dative hw?m, genitive hwæs), from Proto-Germanic *hwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *k?os, *k?is.

The sound change /hw/ > /h/ (without a corresponding change in spelling) due to wh-cluster reduction after an irregular change of /a?/ to /o?/ in Middle English (instead of the expected /??/) and further to /u?/ regularly in Early Modern English. Compare how, which underwent wh-reduction earlier (in Old English), and thus is spelt with h.

Compare Scots wha, West Frisian wa, Dutch wie, Low German we, German wer, Danish hvem, Norwegian Bokmål hvem, Norwegian Nynorsk kven, Icelandic hver.

Pronunciation

• enPR: ho?o, IPA^(key): /hu?/
• Rhymes: -u?

Pronoun

who (singular or plural, nominative case, objective whom, who, possessive whose)

1. (interrogative) What person or people; which person or people; asks for the identity of someone. (used in a direct or indirect question)

   Who is that? (direct question)

   I don't know who it is. (indirect question)

2. (interrogative) What is one's position; asks whether someone deserves to say or do something.

   I don't like what you did, but who am I to criticize you? I've done worse.

3. (relative) The person or people that.

   Her sister who worked here is an enemy of his.
4. (relative) Whoever, he who, they who.
   • 1603, William Shakespeare, Othello, act III, scene 3

     Who steals my purse steals trash.

   It was a nice man who helped us.

Usage notes

• Who is a subject pronoun. Whom is an object pronoun. To determine whether a particular sentence uses a subject or an object pronoun, rephrase it to use he/she or him/her instead of who, whom; if you use he or she, then you use the subject pronoun who; if you use him or her, then you use the object pronoun. The same rule applies to whoever and whomever.

• Who can also be used as an object pronoun, especially in informal writing and speech (hence one hears not only whom are you waiting for? but also who are you waiting for?), and whom may be seen as (overly) formal; in some dialects and contexts, it is hardly used, even in the most formal settings. As an exception to this, fronted prepositional phrases almost always use whom, e.g. one usually says with whom did you go?, not *with who did you go?. However, dialects in which whom is rarely used usually avoid fronting prepositional phrases in the first place (for example, using who did you go with?).

• The use of who as an object pronoun is proscribed by many authorities, but is frequent nonetheless. It is usually felt as much more acceptable than the converse hypercorrection in which whom is misused in place of who, as in *the gentleman whom spoke to me.

• For more information, see "who" and "whom" on Wikipedia.

• When “who” (or the other relative pronouns “that” and “which”) is used as the subject of a relative clause, the verb agrees with the antecedent of the pronoun. Thus “I who am...”, “He who is...”, “You who are...”, etc.
• Formerly sometimes with partitive of, where which is ordinarily used

Translations

Noun

who (plural whos)

1. A person under discussion; a question of which person.

Determiner

who

1. (interrogative, dialect, African-American Vernacular) whose

   Who phone just rang?

Anagrams

• How, how

Middle English

Alternative forms

• wha, hwoa, huo, hwo

Etymology

From Old English hw?, from Proto-West Germanic *hwa?.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???/

Pronoun

who

1. who

Descendants

• English: who
  • Northumbrian: whee, wheea
• Scots: quha, quhay, wha
• Yola: fho

References

• “wh?, pron.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.