Word.ws English Dictionary

doctoring

doctoring is the present participle and gerund of doctor.

Meaning of doctor

Verb

doctor (third-person singular simple present doctors, present participle doctoring, simple past and past participle doctored)

  1. (transitive) To act as a medical doctor to.
    • Her children doctored her back to health.
  2. (humorous, intransitive) To act as a medical doctor.
    • Doctor Princess: Put this on. [gives her lab coat to Finn] OK, you're a doctor now. Good luck.
    • Finn: Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait! I don't know how to doctor!2017, "Do No Harm", season 8, episode 2 of Adventure Time
  3. (transitive) To make (someone) into an (academic) doctor; to confer a doctorate upon.
  4. (transitive) To physically alter (medically or surgically) a living being in order to change growth or behavior.
    • They doctored their apple trees by vigorous pruning, and now the dwarfed trees are easier to pick.
  5. (transitive) To genetically alter an extant species.
    • Mendel's discoveries showed how the evolution of a species may be doctored.
  6. (figuratively, transitive) To alter or make obscure, as with the intention to deceive, especially a document.
    • To doctor the signature of an instrument with intent to defraud is an example of forgery.

See all 19 meanings of doctor

Noun

doctoring (plural doctorings)

  1. Treatment by a doctor; the practice of treating the sick; practising medicine.
    • "I knew enough of doctoring to see that in another hour he would be beyond the reach of earthly help - perhaps in another five minutes."1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
    • Olga de Coude was a very beautiful woman, and Tarzan of the Apes a very lonely young man, with a heart in him that was in need of the doctoring that only a woman may provide.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 39

Forms of doctoring

pluraldoctorings

Words formed from doctoring

Phrases with doctoring

Questions about doctoring

What does doctoring mean?
Doctoring means treatment by a doctor; the practice of treating the sick; practising medicine.
What is doctoring the present participle and gerund of?
Doctoring is the present participle and gerund of doctor.
What part of speech is doctoring?
Doctoring is a noun.
What is the plural of doctoring?
The plural of doctoring is doctorings.

Words near doctoring in the dictionary

  1. doctorfishes
  2. doctorhood
  3. doctorial
  4. doctorially
  5. doctorin'
  6. doctoring
  7. doctoring up
  8. doctorings
  9. doctorish
  10. doctorishness
  11. doctorize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doctoring (page history and authors); doctor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “doctoring.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doctoring. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.