Poticaries

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A practitioner who prepares and dispenses medications and remedies to patients
2. a historic term referring to an early form of pharmacist, often involved in herbal medicine and compounding
3. someone who runs a shop where medicinal substances are sold, typically combining aspects of both medicine and herbalism

Etymology: "Poticaries" is the plural of "poticary," an older spelling of "apothecary," the word for a person who prepares and dispenses medicines. Because the plural form is what appears here, the story belongs to the singular it takes, and that singular is the one that changed shape over the centuries, with the spelling "poticary" showing one of its earlier forms in English. The noun itself traces back to the Greek "apothēkē," meaning a storehouse or repository, which gave rise to the idea of a place where goods were kept. Medieval Latin adopted it as "apothecarius," a keeper of a store, and the sense gradually narrowed to a dealer in drugs and spices. The English word therefore began as a name for a shopkeeper who stocked remedies rather than for a healer.