doctorate

Pluraldoctorates

Formsdoctorates, doctorating, doctorated

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The highest degree that a university faculty awards.

   The position requires a doctorate in chemistry or a closely related field.

   Several members of the department hold doctorates from European universities.

2. 2
   verbarchaic

   To make someone a doctor by conferring the highest university degree on them.

   The new college petitioned the king for the right to doctorate its own graduates.

   Having studied medicine at Padua, he was doctorated there with great ceremony.

   Note

   Current English has a university award or confer a doctorate; this archaic verb once did the job alone. It took the graduate as object, as in Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England, written before 1662: a man bred in Oxford "and there doctorated". Simon Somerville Laurie still uses it in 1886 with the school as subject and no object, asking whether Salernum could doctorate in law.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2