Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who is guided by practical experience rather than precepts or theory.
- n. An unqualified or dishonest practitioner; a charlatan.
- adj. Empirical.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Same as empirical.
- Versed in physical experimentation: as, an empiric alchemist.
- Of or pertaining to the medical empirics.
- n. One of an ancient sect of Greek physicians who maintained that practice or experience, and not theory, is the foundation of the science of medicine.
- n. An experimenter in medical practice, destitute of adequate knowledge; an irregular or unscientific physician; more distinctively, a quack or charlatan.
- n. In general, one who depends mainly upon experience or intuition; one whose procedure in any field of action or inquiry is too exclusively empirical.
- n. = Syn.2. Mountebank, etc. See quack, n.
Wiktionary
- adj. empirical
- n. A member of a sect of ancient physicians who based their theories solely on experience.
- n. Someone who is guided by empiricism; an empiricist.
- n. Any unqualified or dishonest practitioner; a charlatan; a quack.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who follows an empirical method; one who relies upon practical experience.
- n. One who confines himself to applying the results of mere experience or his own observation; especially, in medicine, one who deviates from the rules of science and regular practice; an ignorant and unlicensed pretender; a quack; a charlatan.
- adj. Pertaining to, or founded upon, experiment or experience; depending upon the observation of phenomena; versed in experiments.
- adj. Depending upon experience or observation alone, without due regard to science and theory; -- said especially of medical practice, remedies, etc.; wanting in science and deep insight.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. relying on medical quackery
- adj. derived from experiment and observation rather than theory
Etymologies
- From Old French empirique, from Latin empiricus, from Ancient Greek ἐμπειρικός ("experienced"), from ἐμπειρία (empeiria, "experience, mere experience or practice without knowledge, especially in medicine, empiricism"), from ἔμπειρος (empeiros, "experienced or practised in"), from ἐν (en, "in") + πεῖρα (peira, "a trial, experiment, attempt"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin empīricus, from Greek empeirikos, experienced, from empeiros, skilled : en-, in; see en-2 + peirān, to try (from peira, try, attempt; see per-3 in Indo-European roots). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Charlatan is an opprobrious term, but "empiric" literally means one who follows experience instead of dogma, and should therefore be an honorable designation; but as the medical profession has always been dogmatic, and therefore hostile to empiricism, or fidelity to experience, it has made empiricism an opprobrious term.”
Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 Volume 1, Number 10
“When she spikes a temperature and her heart races, we send blood cultures and give empiric antibiotics that she probably does not really need.”
“Congratulations to all who worked so hard and so long to bring marriage equality to the empiric state: those who stood vigil in Albany, those who lobbied the halls, those who changed their minds, those who wrote checks, those on whose shoulders this victory stands.”
The Huffington Post: Kate Clinton: New York State of Mind -- Rights Not Rites
“You are obviously on a halth care provider personally selected empiric antibiotic.”
Has any of you guys ever had Lyme or othe tick borne disease? My DR.
“Plato, writing about a doctor more than 25 centuries ago, noted "He gives off some empiric treatment with an air of knowledge in the brusque fashion of a dictator.”
The Huffington Post: Malcolm Kushner: Physician Heal Thyself
“I posit that if you are inclined to answer any of them from a non-materialist perspective then you might secretly suspect that there are grander cosmic forces at work than those discernible on a purely empiric level, or, possibly, that you are a victim of societal programming.”
The Huffington Post: Rabbi Adam Jacobs: The God Test: Why Really Everyone Believes
“When they strayed from a "healthy diet," their blood pressure, fasting sugar and cholesterol levels usually worsened, so now they have personal empiric evidence of the benefits of a "healthy diet.”
The Huffington Post: Julie Chen, M.D.: Using Food as Medicine and Our Ally
“Given this historical reality, since you're a rationalist who bases your world view on empiric evidence, could you be open to the possibility that religion isn't inherently bad?”
The Huffington Post: Rabbi Adam Jacobs: An Open Letter To The Atheist Community
“Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence.”
ed abbey | an introduction & on nature « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground
“As one of only two areas of high civilization in the Americas before 1492, Mesoamerica was home to various peoples with a long tradition of empiric and shamanistic medicine.”
Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘empiric’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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strieale's Words
scientism, chronological, christophobia, subsurface, high culture, jeffersonian demo..., jacksonian democracy, incommensurable, rebuttal, discerning, disparate, anodyne and 156 more...
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for words
based upon per- indo-european root
turnverein, veer, frump, far, per, paramount, paramour, parget, parterre, parvenu, perissodactyl, palanquin and 133 more...
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Interesting
Words whose existence till now have been unbeknownst to me.
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