Veterinary
adjectiveRelating to the medical treatment of animals or to the profession that provides it.
How to spell veterinary
10 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce veterinary
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does veterinary mean?
- adjectiveRelating to the medical treatment of animals or to the profession that provides it.
Veterinary in a sentence
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The puppy needed urgent veterinary care after swallowing a coin.
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She spent six years training before opening her own veterinary practice.
Where does veterinary come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin veterinarius, meaning 'of or relating to beasts of burden', that is, the working cattle, oxen, and pack animals that needed regular doctoring. That adjective was built on veterinae, a collective term for draught animals, which many scholars connect to vetus, meaning 'old', perhaps because the older, sturdier animals were the ones put to heavy labour and so most often in need of care. English adopted the word in the mid 1600s to describe the medical treatment of animals, and by the 1790s 'veterinary surgeon' was an established profession. The modern shortening 'vet' hides the long middle of the full spelling, which is exactly where writers stumble: the unstressed 'er-in-a' sequence is easy to compress into the spoken 'vet-rin-ry', so a letter often goes missing on paper. Remembering the buried root veterinae, the working animals, helps fix all four of those quiet syllables.
How the word is built
- veterin- (from Latin veterinae: beasts of burden, working animals)
- -ary (relating to)
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