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DOCTOR

phrasetop 1 000 in film dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈdɒktə//
  • United States//ˈdɑktɚ//
  • Australia//ˈdɔktə//
  • Australia//ˈdɒktə//

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.

phrase

  1. 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.

Etymology

A backronym from the word doctor.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).