Empiric

Alternative forms

• empirick obsolete

Origin

From Old French empirique, from Latin empiricus, from Ancient Greek ἐμπειρικός ("experienced"), from ἐμπειρία (empeiria, "experience, mere experience or practice without knowledge, especially in medicine, empiricism"), from ἔμπειρος (empeiros, "experienced or practised in"), from ἐν (en, "in") + πεῖρα (peira, "a trial, experiment, attempt").

Adjective

1. empirical

Full definition of empiric

Noun

1. A member of a sect of ancient physicians who based their theories solely on experience.
2. Someone who is guided by empiricism; an empiricist.
3. Any unqualified or dishonest practitioner; a charlatan; a quack.
• 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, New York Review Books 2001, p. 257:An empiric oftentimes, and a silly chirurgeon, doth more strange cures than a rational physician.
• 1661, Robert Boyle, , page 24:... Paracelsus and some few other sooty Empiricks, rather then (as they are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they were too illiterate to understand ...
• John LockeSwallow down opinions as silly people do empirics' pills.
• 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 33:To the disgust of doctors, the royal family at Versailles allowed one Brun, a wandering empiric ..., to administer a proprietary ‘sovereign remedy’ to the ailing monarch.