physic
Pluralphysics
Verbphysics, physicking, physicked
Pluralphysics
Formsphysics, physicking, physicked
- 1A medicine or drug, especially a cathartic or purgative that empties the bowels.
The apothecary mixed a bitter physic for the feverish child.
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief.
1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 34”Note
In Shakespeare it is often a figurative dose. In Sonnet 34, shame cannot "give physic to my grief". Measure for Measure speaks of "a physic / That's bitter, to sweet end." Bitterness that does good is the idea it carries, and the King James Bible of 1611 urges taking it before illness comes. Countable, it takes an article: a physic, or physics for several remedies.
- 2The art or profession of healing disease; the practice of medicine.
She devoted her life to physic, treating the poor without charge.
Physic and surgery were once taught as separate disciplines.
Note
The healing art taken as a whole is uncountable and takes no article: one studies or practices physic, not a physic. Stephen Hales, writing on ventilators in 1743, sets fresh air against it, warning that foul air "does more harm than any Physick can repair." Keep it distinct from the dose itself, which can be counted.
- 3To administer medicine to a person or animal, especially a purgative.
The farrier physicked the ailing mare twice a day.
Parents would physic their children at the change of seasons.
Note
Dosing someone can also mean correcting them. Shakespeare's "I will physic your rankness" in As You Like It is a threat. In Stephen King's The Tommyknockers (1987), a mother snaps that Anne is "so contrary cheese'd physic ya!" That gives the verb a homely, scolding ring, with the bitter dose never far behind.
- 4To cure or heal someone of illness or affliction.
They believed time and care could physic even a deep grief.
The waters were said to physic those who bathed in them.
Note
The healing verb takes the person as its object and introduces the ailment with of. Thomas Heywood in 1637 asks who will "physicke thee of this venereall itch." Like cure someone of, it frames the illness as something taken away. In the inflected forms a k joins the c, giving physicking and physicked, so that the c keeps its hard sound.
Less common meanings
- 5Natural philosophy; the study of the natural world, an older name for physics.
Newton's work transformed physic into a precise mathematical science.
In the old curriculum, physic covered everything from falling bodies to the tides.
Note
Here the word names the study of nature rather than its cure, keeping the Greek sense of phúsis, "nature". The two meanings can be hard to tell apart in older prose. When Jonathan Swift's narrator in 1726 "studied Physick two years" at Leyden, only context separates natural philosophy from the healing art. Physics is the modern name for this field.
- 6A physician; one who practices the healing art.
Desire is death, which physic did except.
1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 147”Note
This use has died out entirely; in it the word stands for the person rather than the practice. Shakespeare's Sonnet 147 shows it: "Desire is death, which physic did except," with the physician as the one who objected. The same spelling also meant the art and the dose, so a modern reader should try those meanings first. For the practitioner, physician is the only safe word.
- 7Relating to or concerned with material things that actually exist; physical.
Note
The oldest layer of the word comes from Middle English phisik, from Latin physicus, from Greek phusikós, "natural". That adjective was built on phúsis, "nature", and finally on a verb meaning "to grow". The medical nouns and verbs reached English by a separate road, through Old French fisike, but from the same Greek adjective. As an adjective it compares with more and most: more physic, most physic.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English phisik, from Latin physicus, from Ancient Greek phŭsĭkós ('natural; physical'), from phúsis ('nature, origin, form, kind'), from phŭ́ō ('grow'), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- ('to appear, become, rise up').
From Middle English fysike (noun) and phisiken (verb, from the noun), from Old French fisike ('natural science, art of healing'), from Latin physica ('study of nature'), from Ancient Greek phusikḗ, the feminine of phŭsĭkós ('natural; physical').