Vet

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /vɛt/

Definitions

1. A medical professional who treats animals, or to carefully examine and verify something before approval
2. A professional specializing in animal care and treatment, as well as the action of inspecting or assessing something critically before it is accepted or utilized
3. A practitioner who provides healthcare to animals, along with the process of thoroughly reviewing or evaluating something to ensure its quality or safety

Etymology: "Vet" is a clipping, meaning it was shortened from a longer word, and it has two separate origins that happen to look identical. The more familiar sense, a veterinary surgeon, comes from "veterinarian," itself a formal term built on the Latin "veterinae," meaning beasts of burden. Clipping the full word down to its first syllable is what produced the everyday noun. The other route is "veteran," the person with long experience, especially in military service. Clipping that word gave a separate noun, and the two have since coincided in spelling and pronunciation. The verb sense, to check or examine something thoroughly, is probably an extension of the animal-doctor sense: a vet examines an animal to verify its soundness, and the meaning broadened from there to general scrutiny of anything, such as vetting a candidate or a document.

Synonyms: veterinarian, doctor