Rhinologist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medical specialist who concentrates on disorders involving the nasal cavity and sinuses
2. A healthcare professional focused on diagnosing and treating conditions related to the nose and sinus passages
3. An expert in the medical field who deals with illnesses concerning the nasal structures and sinuses

Etymology: "Rhinologist" is a plain technical coinage built from two Greek-derived pieces. The first, "rhin-", comes from Greek "rhis" (genitive "rhinos"), meaning "nose," and it appears in other medical and zoological terms such as "rhinoceros," literally "nose-horned." The second, "-ologist," is a suffix denoting a person who studies or specialises in a particular field, the same ending found in "biologist" or "geologist." Joining the two gives a practitioner who studies the nose. The word belongs to the modern medical vocabulary that was built from classical roots, so it was not used by the ancient Greeks, who had their own physicians but no specialist of this name. Its usefulness lies in the way it packs a whole clinical specialty into a single noun that any doctor or patient can recognise.