Cosmologist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A scientist who studies the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe and its contents
2. A researcher who investigates the nature, origin, and large-scale structure of the universe and its physical laws
3. A scholar specializing in the scientific study of cosmic phenomena, galactic systems, and the fundamental composition and history of all space and matter

Etymology: The word is built from "cosmology" and the suffix "-ist," and the suffix carries most of the history. Its ancestor is the Ancient Greek "-istēs," used to form agent nouns for people who practise or follow a particular activity, and that pattern moved through Latin and Old French into Middle English before reaching English as "-ist." Speakers attached it freely to existing roots, so a person who studied the universe could be named simply by adding the ending to "cosmology," the study of the cosmos. The formation is therefore a straightforward English coinage rather than a classical word. "Cosmology" itself comes from Greek roots meaning "order" and "discourse," but the agent form "cosmologist" follows the regular pattern of "biologist" or "geologist," so the person was named by analogy with those existing terms. Its exact date of first recorded use is not something I can confirm here.

Synonyms: astronomer, astrophysicist