clinic

Etymology

From French clinique, from Late Latin clīnicus (“a bed-ridden person, one baptized on a sick-bed, a physician”), from Ancient Greek κλῑνικός (klīnikós, “pertaining to a bed”), from κλῑ́νη (klī́nē, “bed”), from κλῑ́νω (klī́nō, “to lean, incline”).

noun

1. A medical facility, such as a hospital, especially one for the treatment and diagnosis of outpatients.
2. (medicine, by extension) A hospital session to diagnose or treat patients.
3. (medicine, obsolete) A school, or class, in which medicine or surgery is taught by examining and treating patients in the presence of the pupils.
4. A group practice of several physicians or other health professionals.
5. A meeting for the diagnosis of problems, or training, on a particular subject.
   A local community group will be holding a legal clinic where low-income residents can consult a lawyer for free.
   We'll also be offering music clinics, lessons, and new product demonstrations throughout the year. 1986, Music Trades, volume 134, numbers 1-6, page 38
6. A temporary office arranged on a regular basis to allow politicians to meet their constituents.
7. (wrestling) A series of workouts used to build skills of practitioners regardless of team affiliation.
8. (obsolete) A bed-ridden person
9. (obsolete) Somene who receives baptism on a sickbed.
   We are all Clinicks in this point 1666, Sancroft, 'Lex Ignea 41
   The conclusion is inevitable , that pouring or sprinkling was regarded, in the primitive church, as valid baptism; and of course that immersion was not considered essential. It has been objected, indeed, that the clinics were canonically prohibited the priesthood. But why were they prohibited? Not because of the informality of their batism; but because their sincerity had not been sufficiently tested. 1833, Enoch Pond, Treatise on Christian Baptism, page 43
   Clinic baptism is all that is contemplated by them, and even in this case a clinic was, unless in unusual cases, debarred from orders. 1861, James Chrystal, A History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, page 97
   Whitby (on Rom. vi. 4). —"It being so expressly declared here, and Col. ii. 12, that we are buried with Christ in baptism by being buried under water; and the argument to oblige us to a conformity to His death, by dying to sin, being taken hence; and this immersion being religiously observed by all Christians for thirteen centuries, and approved by our church, and the change of it into sprinkling even without any allowance from the author of this institution, or any licence from any refusal of the cup to the laity; it were to be wished that this custom might be again of general use, and aspersion only permitted, as of old, in the case of the clinic, or in present danger of death." 1865, Richard Ingham, A Hand-book on Christian Baptism
   As "baby sprinkling" is an offence which it abhors, so Clinic sprinkling is a sham which it detests. 1874, James Wilkinson Dale, An Inquiry Into the Usage of Baptizo, page 523
   And as the practice of immersion in baptism in the time of St. Laurence was universal except in the case of a handful of Clinics—so small that they scarcely deserve to be named—the story is unworthy of notice. 1878, William Cathcart, The Baptism of the Ages and of the Nations, page 126
   The prejudice against clinic baptism, indeed, was such that only in exceptional cases was a clinic considered as qualified for ordination. 1879, Henry Sweetser Burrage, The Act of Baptism: In the History of the Christian Church, page 83