This week’s theme
Verbing the noun

This week’s words
blazon
spitchcock
physic
troth
barnacle

---

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(FIZ-ik)

MEANING:

noun:	1. A medicine, especially one that acts as a laxative.
	2. A doctor.
	3. Medical science or the medical profession.
verb tr.:	1. To act upon as a laxative.
	2. To treat with, or as if with, a medicine.
	3. To cure or heal.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French fisique (medical science or natural science), from Latin physica (natural science), from Greek physike (science of nature), from physis (nature). Earliest documented use: noun 1325, verb 1400.

USAGE:

“His reputation as a physic was worthless if he couldn’t truly heal.”
David Walton; Quintessence; Tor; 2013.

“Of Knadler Lake, about a mile long, [David] Love said, ‘That’s bitter water -- sodium sulphate. It would physic you something awful.’”
John McPhee; Rising from the Plains; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 1986.

See more usage examples of physic in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: