# Ph.D.

Pronunciation: US say "pee-aych-DEE" /ˈpiːˌeɪ̯t͡ʃˈdiː/; UK

## Noun

1. The Doctor of Philosophy degree, awarded for original research and generally the highest academic degree a college or university confers.
   - Simple: The highest degree a university can give, earned by doing new research in a subject.
   - _After defending her dissertation, she was awarded a Ph.D. in molecular biology._
   - _Several Ph.D.s in economics were granted by the department this spring._
2. A person who holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A person who has earned the highest research degree from a university.
   - _As a Ph.D., she was expected to mentor the junior researchers._
   - _The lab was staffed almost entirely by Ph.D.s in their twenties._

## Origin

Borrowed from New Latin Ph.D., an abbreviation of Philosophiae Doctor, meaning "Doctor of Philosophy."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/ph.d. (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).