This week's extracts are quite full of doctors, and the title Doctor is relatively tricky. I would expect most native English speakers to understand doctor as meaning Doctor of Medicine (MD). I can imagine, however, that university staff might assume that it indicates a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). The original Latin meaning was "teacher", in other words a highly educated person (not specifically in medical matters), which means that again the modern English understanding of the word has developed further away from the original, whereas Slovak usage remains closer to it. But the Slovak language has the advantage of having its own word "lekár", i.e. an expert in "lieky", cures or medicines, and the closest English translation for this is "physician" /fyzišn/, an expert in preserving natural conditions. Unfortunately that name is old-fashioned and archaic nowadays, and fully replaced by the word "doctor".
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