empiric
Syllables: em·pi·ric/ɛmˈpɪɹɪk/
empiric adjective: empirical.
Adjective
empiric
Noun
empiric (plural empirics)
- A member of a sect of ancient physicians who based their theories solely on experience.
- Someone who is guided by empiricism; an empiricist.
- Any unqualified or dishonest practitioner; a charlatan; a quack.
- An empiric oftentimes, and a silly chirurgeon, doth more strange cures than a rational physician., New York Review, Books, 2001, p.257
- […] Paracelsus and some few other sooty Empiricks, rather then (as they are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they were too illiterate to understand […]1661, Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist, page 24
Examples of empiric in a sentence
- […] and must therefore swallow down Opinions, as silly People do Empiricks['] Pills, without knowing what they are made of[…]1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], “XIX. Of Wrong Assent, or Error”, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […]...
- To the disgust of doctors, the royal family at Versailles allowed one Brun, a wandering empiric […], to administer a proprietary ‘sovereign remedy’ to the ailing monarch.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 33:
Forms of empiric
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative form (obsolete) | empirick |
| Noun | |
| plural | empirics |
Origin of empiric
Borrowed from Latin empiricus, from Ancient Greek ἐμπειρῐκός (empeirĭkós, “experienced”), from ἐμπειρία (empeiría, “experience, mere experience or practice without knowledge, especially in medicine, empiricism”), from ἔμπειρος (émpeiros, “experienced or practised in”), from ἐν (en, “in”) + πεῖρα (peîra, “a trial, experiment, attempt”). Not related to empire.
Questions about empiric
- What does empiric mean?
- Empiric means empirical.
- How do you use empiric in a sentence?
- […] and must therefore swallow down Opinions, as silly People do Empiricks['] Pills, without knowing what they are made of[…]
- What part of speech is empiric?
- Empiric can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce empiric?
- Empiric is pronounced /ɛmˈpɪɹɪk/.
Words near empiric in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: empiric (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Qwertygiy-empiric.wav.
Cite this entry: “empiric.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/empiric. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.