clinic
Pluralclinics
- 1A medical facility, especially one where patients are diagnosed and treated without staying overnight.
The rural clinic treats hundreds of outpatients each week without admitting them.
After the accident, he was referred to a specialist clinic for follow-up care.
Similardispensary
Note
A word built on the Greek for "bed" (klīnē, from klī́nō, "to lean") now names a place you visit and leave the same day. Late Latin clinicus already pointed both ways, meaning the bed-ridden patient and the physician at the bedside. In everyday use the word usually takes a qualifier saying where it is or what it treats: a rural clinic, a specialist clinic.
- 2A group practice made up of several physicians or other health professionals working together.
The downtown clinic employs a dozen physicians across several specialties.
Several family doctors merged their offices into one large clinic last year.
Similarpractice
- 3A meeting held to train people in a particular subject or to diagnose problems within it.
The college offered a résumé clinic for graduating students each spring.
Master gardeners hosted a clinic on pruning fruit trees.
Similarworkshop, seminar, session
Note
Medicine lends its format to everything else. A clinic is where problems get diagnosed, so a legal clinic offers free consultations with a lawyer, and Music Trades in 1986 lists music clinics alongside lessons and product demonstrations. The subject goes in front as a modifier (legal, music, résumé), and the word keeps a flavor of hands-on help rather than lecture.
- 4A scheduled session at a hospital during which patients are diagnosed or treated.
The consultant sees forty patients at her Thursday clinic.
Antenatal clinics are held weekly in the maternity wing.
Similarsession
Note
Here the building becomes the appointment. A clinic in this use is something a consultant holds or runs on a given day, as in her Thursday clinic. It extends the medical facility from place to time, and a specialty placed in front of it, as in antenatal clinics, names what the session is for rather than where it happens.
- 5A series of training workouts designed to build participants' skills regardless of which team they belong to.
The summer clinic drew young pitchers from across the state.
A two-day clinic refined the recruits' marksmanship.
Note
Wrestling is the home of this use, though the same open format turns up in other sports and drills. What sets a clinic apart from ordinary practice is who attends. Participants come regardless of team, so the sessions bring wrestlers from different teams together to work on individual skills rather than one squad's preparation.
- 6A temporary office held on a regular schedule so that a politician can meet with constituents.
Each month the council member runs a clinic for local residents.
Constituents lined up at the senator's clinic to raise their concerns.
Similarsurgery
Less common meanings
- 7A school or class in which medicine or surgery was taught by examining and treating patients in front of the students.
Note
The bedside was the classroom: students learned by watching real patients examined and treated, which makes the Greek "bed" in the word literal. The use is obsolete and belongs to historical writing, usually in the past tense. Late Latin clinicus could already mean "a physician," the teacher's side of the same bed.
- 8A person who is confined to bed, especially by long-term illness or infirmity.
Note
English once kept the Latin patient alongside the place: Late Latin clinicus meant "a bed-ridden person," from the same "bed" root behind the medical facility. The use is obsolete, and a modern reader will take a clinic to be a building. Quote it from older texts rather than use it in new writing.
- 9A person who receives baptism while lying ill on a sickbed rather than in church.
The priest hurried to baptize the fevered clinic before nightfall.
We are all Clinicks in this point
1666, Sancroft, 'Lex Ignea 41Note
Baptism by pouring or sprinkling, given where the sick lay, was called clinic baptism. Enoch Pond's Treatise on Christian Baptism (1833) argues from such clinics that immersion was not essential. The status carried a cost: James Chrystal (1861) notes that a clinic was usually debarred from orders. Sancroft in 1666 stretches the word figuratively: "We are all Clinicks in this point."
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from French clinique, from Late Latin clīnicus (a bed-ridden person, or a physician), from Ancient Greek klīnikós ("pertaining to a bed"), from klī́nē ("bed"), from klī́nō ("to lean, incline").