Meteorologist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A scientist who specializes in understanding and predicting weather patterns
2. A professional trained to analyze atmospheric conditions and forecast the weather
3. An expert who researches the atmosphere to provide weather information and predictions

Etymology: The word "meteorology" is the base here, and "-ist" is the suffix that turns a field of study into a name for the person who practises it. The suffix has a long ancestry: it came from Ancient Greek "-istēs", which was built from the verb-forming "-izein" and the agent ending "-tēs", so an "-istēs" word named someone who did or followed something. The Romans borrowed it as "-ista", French took it as "-iste", and English picked it up through Middle English "-ist" and grew it into a productive tool, attaching it to countless bases from "artist" to "pianist". "Meteorology" itself is the older, grander half of the pair. It draws on Greek "metéōros", meaning "high in the air" or "lofty", which gave the sense of things happening in the sky, such as rain, wind and lightning. Once the study of such phenomena had a name, adding "-ist" to it was the natural step for naming its practitioners. "Meteorologist" is therefore a plain English formation: a field-name plus a person-suffix, with no separate history of its own.

Synonyms: weather forecaster, climatologist, atmospheric scientist