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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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-ician Also -icist.

Nouns denoting occupations.

[Mainly from English words ending in -ic or -ics.]

Some examples in -ician are clinician, electrician, magician, mathematician, optician, and technician. Examples in -icist include ceramicist, geneticist, and lyricist. The two forms are equivalent in meaning and there is no clear rule about which is used on which stem; physician and physicist both derive from Latin physica, natural things, but by different routes and have very different senses. A few words in -ician have been formed on other English stems, mainly in American English: beautician, mortician. See also -ian and -ist.

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