doctor

noun

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 DO, DPM, MD, DMD, or DDS in the US, or MBBS or BDS in the UK.

   “If you still feel unwell tomorrow, see your doctor.”

   “By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death / Will seize the doctor too.”

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.

   “So from that tyme forwarde I began to ſmell the word of god, and forſoke the ſchole doctors and ſuch foolries.”

   “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"”

   “The use of a disk doctor may be the only way of recovering valuable data following a disk crash.”

7. A fish, the friar skate.
8. (obsolete)A witchdoctor.

   “[T]he material operation is that the doctor would catch a certain species of lizard under particular circumstances at a particular time. He would croon over it the name of the man while gently rattling his ‘devil bones,’ thus calling up the evil spirit that follows these particular charmed bones.”

9. (obsolete, slang)A ship's cook.

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

   “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.””

10. The title of an academic or medical doctor; used before or instead of the doctor's name.

    “The students asked to see Doctor Jones.”

    “Doctor Smith carried out the medical procedure.”

    “Well, Doctor, what do you think? Will he live?”

    “They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin, (I speak not of what the Doctor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him,) who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion.”

verb

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

   “Her children doctored her back to health.”

2. (humorous, intransitive)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. (figuratively, 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.”

   “That picture – the one that Andrew claimed on BBC’s Newsnight might have been doctored, since he had “no recollection” of then or ever meeting Giuffre at Tramp nightclub in London – will likely serve as both a prequel and postscript of the saga.”

   “Catherine, the Princess of Wales, apologized on Monday for doctoring a photo of her with her three children, which was recalled by several news agencies on Sunday after they determined the image had been manipulated.”

7. (transitive)To adulterate, drug, or poison (drink).

   “There is no doubt that a few months ago Creake deliberately planned to poison her with some weed-killer. […] The gist of it was that she had the strongest suspicion that Creake doctored a bottle of stout which he expected she would drink for her supper when she was alone.”

8. (intransitive, obsolete)To take medicine.

phrase

1. A mnemonic to help remember the difference between the Spanish verbs ser and estar (both meaning "to be"); ser is generally used for: Descriptions, Occupations, Characteristics, Times, Origins, and Relationships.

   “SER is used to classify or identify attributes like, description, occupation, characteristic, time, origin or relationship. The acronym D-O-C-T-O-R could be helpful to remember it.”

   “You can use the acronyms DOCTOR and PLACE to help you remember ser vs. estar, particularly for more specific cases when you’re not sure which verb to use.”

   “Let's look at DOCTOR and ser first. To recap, ser is used when discussing permanent states – about what something is – and this acronym is a useful trick to remind us what those permanent states are.”