Therapist
nounA person trained to treat physical or mental conditions, usually without surgery or drugs.
How to spell therapist
9 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce therapist
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does therapist mean?
- nounA person trained to treat physical or mental conditions, usually without surgery or drugs.
Therapist in a sentence
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The therapist helped her rebuild strength after the knee operation.
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He books a session with his therapist every other week to manage stress.
Where does therapist come from?
Language of origin: Greek
The word comes from the Greek therapeia, meaning 'healing', 'care', or 'attendance', which itself was built on the verb therapeuein, 'to treat medically' or 'to wait upon and serve'. From that root English first acquired 'therapy' in the 1840s, and 'therapist' followed soon after as the agent noun naming the person who carries out the treatment, formed with the familiar -ist ending that marks a practitioner. The underlying idea of attending to and caring for someone explains why the term spread so easily beyond medicine into psychology, physiotherapy, and speech work. The spelling keeps the Greek 'th' opening and the single 'p', and the genuine trap is the unstressed middle vowel, written 'a' (therAPist) although it is barely sounded, plus the urge to confuse it with the unrelated joke spelling 'the rapist', which is worth ignoring entirely.
How the word is built
- therap- (from Greek therapeia: healing, care)
- -ist (one who practises)
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