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Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 1
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 1 |
Why are doctors said to be practicing, while no other professionals are. This sparked a heated debate at our house. Some people were amazed that a doctor could successfully deliver a thousand babies and still be practicing!
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
UK usage, at least, is that a dentist has a dental practice and a solicitor has a legal practice, there may be others. In fact it is standard practice to refer to them in that way.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Hi, cobun.
"Practice" isn't limited to medicine. It is the common term used as well for active lawyers. The seventh definition in the Webster's dictionary for "practice" is "the business of a professional person," and the sixtheenth is "to pursue a profession, esp. law or medicine". I'd hazard a guess that this use derives from the third definition, "a repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring proficiency", through the fourth definition, "condition arrived at by experience or exercise".
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Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 500
addict
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addict
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 500 |
I refer to myself as a "practicing" artist, partly to indicate that I'm active at it, and partly because the double meaning of "condition arrived at by experience" and "repeated performance for the purpose of acquiring proficiency" pleases me. One is never perfect at anything, after all, so we're all kinda practicing.
And then there's the matter of religious "practice". Last Hallowe'en the young daughter of a friend of mine, dressed up as a witch, overheard me say to her mother that I was a practicing witch and informed me quite seriously that she didn't have to practice.....
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788 |
Some professionals practice and then they don't. All judges in the State of Washington are lawyers. Part-time judges may continue to practice law, that is, to be in private practice, so long as it does not conflict with their judicial duties. I am a part-time judge but do not use the other part of my time as a lawyer, but rather as a priest, thus, when people ask, I say that "I do not practice law." This is fully understood but carries with it the sense that a judge, 'tho a lawyer doing lawyerly things on the bench, is NOT practicing law when judging. Odd.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
apropos of almost nothing, a misodoctakleidist is clearly someone who hates to practice the piano.
-joe (practicing lexicography) friday
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
So...would the oldest profession be said to be "practicing"? Or is that only if they're being safe?
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