clinic: [17] Etymologically, a clinic is a place with ‘beds’. It comes ultimately from Greek klínē ‘bed’, which goes back to the Indo-European base *kli- ‘lean, slope’ (source also of English lean) and hence was originally ‘something on which one reclines’. The adjective derived from this, klīnkós, reached English via Latin clīnicus, having become specialized in meaning from ‘bed’ in general to ‘sick-bed’. Clinic was replaced as an adjective by clinical in the 18th century, but it continued on as a noun, originally in the sense ‘sick or bedridden person’.
This survived into the 19th century (‘You are free to roam at large over the bodies of my clinics’, E Berdoe, St Bernard’s 1887), and the modern sense ‘hospital’ did not arrive until the late 19th century, borrowed from French clinique or German klinik. => decline, lean
clinic (n.)
1620s, from French clinique (17c.), from Latin clinicus "physician that visits patients in their beds," from Greek klinike (techne) "(practice) at the sickbed," from klinikos "of the bed," from kline "bed, couch, that on which one lies," from suffixed form of PIE root *kli- "lean, slope" (see lean (v.)).
Originally in English "bedridden person;" sense of "hospital" is 1884, from German Klinik in this sense, itself from French clinique, via the notion of "bedside medical education." The modern sense is thus reversed from the classical, when the "clinic" came to the patient. General sense of "conference for group instruction in something" is from 1919.
双语例句
1. Charles was at the clinic recovering from an operation on his arm.
查尔斯的胳膊动了手术，正在这家诊所进行康复治疗。
来自柯林斯例句
2. She had an operation on her knee at the clinic.
她在诊所做了个膝盖手术。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He went to a clinic to cure his drinking and overeating.
他去诊所戒酒并控制饮食。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The clinic felt like Alcatraz. There was no escape.
