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medical

adjectivenouncommon in dialogue

  • //ˈmɛdɪkl̩//

Of or pertaining to the practice of medicine.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or pertaining to the practice of medicine.

    medical doctor; medical student

    Do you have any medical experience?

    The US supreme court has ruled unanimously that natural human genes cannot be patented, a decision that scientists and civil rights campaigners said removed a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation.

  2. 2

    Intended to have a therapeutic effect; medicinal.

    medical marijuana; medical cannabis; medical treatment

  3. 3

    Requiring medical treatment.

    A costly medical condition can bankrupt you if it doesn't kill you first.

  4. 4

    Pertaining to the state of one's health.

    medical examination; medical exemption; medical history; medical record; medical diagnosis

  5. 5

    Pertaining to or requiring treatment by other than surgical means.

    medical ward

  6. 6

    Pertaining to medication specifically (that is, pharmacotherapy), rather than to other aspects of medicine and surgery.

    medical oncology, radiation oncology, and surgical oncology

    surgical therapy only when medical therapy fails

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *med- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Italic *medos Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁ti Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁yeti Proto-Italic *-ēō Latin -eō Latin medeor Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Latin -icus Latin medicus Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Medieval Latin medicālisbor. French médicalbor. English medical Borrowed from French médical, from Medieval Latin medicālis, from Latin medicus. Replaced Old English lǣċe (“doctor (physician)”), which is cognate with Icelandic læknir (“doctor”).

noun

  1. 1

    informalA medical examination.

    You'll have to get a medical before you apply for that job.

    After completing a medical and the requisite paperwork on Tuesday to seal the deal, Di María said: “I am absolutely delighted to be joining Manchester United. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Spain and there were a lot of clubs interested in me, but United is the only club that I would have left Real Madrid for.

    All UK train drivers must undergo a medical every three years up to the age of 54, and annually from then on.

  2. 2

    archaicA medical practitioner.

    We medicals have a better way than that. When we dislike a friend of ours, we dissect him.

Forms

plural
medicals
comparative
more medical
superlative
most medical
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).