medicaster
/ˈmɛdəˌkæstɚ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "But these innovating Medicaſters have introduced a Practice not only very precarious, but in many Reſpects extremely dangerous, and quite devoid of any one of the Qualities which conſtitute a good Remedy, viz. to cure the Patient, as the Axiom has it, cito, tuto, & jucunde, i.e. ſpeedily, ſafely, and pleaſantly."
- "The most idiotic medicaster, when he had named, or, as they term it, diagnosticated a typhoid fever, found himself upon a level with the medical celebrities of the epoch. […] If the patient died, that was perfectly simple: he had a typhoid fever to which he was inevitably doomed to succumb! If he recovered, what a noble triumph for the medicaster, even when he had perhaps arbitrarily imposed the name of typhoid upon a simple and benignant fever, as is constantly done!"
- "[I]t [opium] is a double-edged sword, a divine gift in the hands of a master, a poison in those of a mere routinist—a medicaster—a demi-physician."
- "[I]f pushed, I would judge that many of those ‘medicasters’ and ‘charlatans’ commonly arraigned as tricksters were less cheats than zealots: if we are to speak of delusion, it is primarily self-delusion[…]."
Etymology
From French médicastre or Italian medicastro, from Late Latin medicaster, from Latin medicus (“a doctor, a physician; a surgeon”) + -aster (suffix forming nouns expressing incomplete resemblance, which are thus usually pejorative).
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: médicastre, medicastro, medicaster, medicus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmɛdəˌkæstɚ/
- British English: /ˈmɛdɪkastə/