Religion is not large enough to show up as a separate category. I imagine it’s a part of “other” in humanities or social science, but I don’t know for sure. It’s really small, though. So, yeah, I stand by “very few.”
By comparison, according to this chart, 22.9% of doctorates are given in life sciences, 11.8 in physical sciences, 16.3 in psychology and social sciences, 18.5 in engineering, 8.3 in education… By @Pleonast’s “original” definition, all the people who hold these PhD’s have no business calling themselves doctors.
That’s very German. They do (generally speaking) love their honorifics.
My wife has a PhD. She’s not precious about it, but her correct title is “Dr” and in instances where titles are used she insists people use the correct one. That’s not remotely unreasonable.
I agree. However, plenty of other people do not and it can’t be considered a standard. So, any objection to Dr. Biden being referred to that way should first be addressed to the long list of other people who have pretentiously used the title for a long time.
The “holder of an advanced degree” usage is older, but I’ll agree that there’s a fuzzy border in language usage. The trouble is that university teaching and the giving of degrees was almost entirely in Latin. (There is no doubt about the meaning of the word “doctor” in Latin.) And the most common type of degree was theological.
So when a degreed person in a church was called a “doctor”, was that in English or Latin? And even if the more knowledgeable people understood what “doctor” meant in Latin, when the term was used by unknowledgeable people in English, what connotation were they using, if every “doctor” they knew was an educated member of the clergy?
Nope, the original meaning was a teacher of church doctrine, from about 1300.
In England, the usages of an advanced degree and as a medical professional both date back to about the same time, around 1400, as the entry at Etymology.com sets out:
The term “doctor” in the sense of church teacher was being used by 1298, well before the English meaning of an advanced degree, attested to by the late 1300s in the Etymology article.
Sorry. I see I was unclear. I was referring to your idea that the “original” usage is all that matters. I’m standing by the Etymological dictionary’s assertion that the “church father” meaning in English predates “holder of advanced degree.” If all that counts is the original definition, which sounds like it’s your position, then very few of these folks are church fathers and they should not be calling themselves doctors. It was a response to @acsenray anyway…Better would have been to say something like “By Pleonast’s definition that ‘original’ is what counts…” Sorry again for not being clear.
This ludicrous op-ed and the position espoused seems to me a side-effect of the conservative war on education and “ivory tower elites.” It fits the modern conservative movement to a T to object to calling someone a Doctor who literally has a DOCTORate. (I apologize for the grammar of that previous sentence, but I’m not going to re-write it).
And the patronizing misogyny of the op-ed is just the cherry on top.
Yep, it’s a right-wing threefer. Epstein simultaneously got to take a shot at the Bidens, attack the “intellectual elite”, and troll intelligent women everywhere.
Where have you been the last 600 years? Words change meaning. Now when you say "Doctor’ outside of a university setting, people think Medical of some sort. “I am going to see my Doctor on Monday”- no one think you’re gonna see a person with a PhD in linguistics.
But why are arguing with me? You even quoted my "**BUT since that train has left the station…" and “Personally if I had my way…”
So, that is simply my little personal idiosyncrasy. I never said that is how it really is, or that Dr Biden should be called Mrs. In fact I said the exact opposite.
Instead, you went off on some pedantic rant (and wrong too, see Ulf’s post), without actually understanding what I posted.
Try reading for comprehension sometime. Save the pedantic rants for someone who cares.
It is simply my little personal idiosyncrasy. I never said that is how it really is, or that Dr Biden should be called Mrs. In fact I said the exact opposite.
It is really based on the fact that outside universities, when people say "Doctor’ 99% of the time they are meaning some sort of medical expert. When a person comes on stage and asks “Is there a Doctor in the house?”, do you stand up and volunteer your services as a scientist?
But again, it is what it is, and if Dr Jill Biden prefers being called Doctor, more power to her.
If only these examples had any real bearing on the issue at hand, which is using the honorific when mentioning their name. This example and the one above about talking about “my doctor” are essentially strawmen that nobody would disagree with.
The latter has no bearing on the former. Of course no one with a PhD in Geology is going to announce themselves when someone calls “is there a doctor in the house”, because most people are able to use contextual clues to understand what sort of doctor is required. But that doesn’t mean that referring to a medical doctor is 99% of the usage of “doctor”. That’s absurd.
At least they’re consistent.