Beware of doctors, engineers and professors

Today’s English
April 30th, 2017

Professors, doctors and engineers are, no doubt,  respectable people of noble professions.    This sounds true as long as the noun forms associated with them are considered. If you look at the verb forms related to them, you are likely to feel that a bit of curse has fallen on them, or something hidden with them is brought to light.

Doctor (verb):

The verb form doctor has two meanings: (i) to change documents illegally in order to trick  somebody, ii) to poison food or to add something harmful to food

1. The police arrested him for doctoring the documents.
2. He doctored the food and tried to kill his friend.

Engineer(verb)
The word “engineer” when used as a verb means “to arrange a meeting cleverly and secretly especially to your advantage.”  It is synonymous with “contrive", plot, scheme and plan illegally.

1. He engineered the meeting to take revenge on his enemies.
2. The meeting engineered in her private chamber was not known to anyone.

Profess(verb):
If the word writer has emerged from write, singer from sing and actor from act, one is likely to infer that the word professor must have derived from profess.  The verb form profess means “to pretend". Though oxford dictionary says that its origin is from a Latin verb “profiteri” meaning “to declare publicly”, it also agrees with the meaning – “claim to have a quality when it is not".

1. He professed to have the knowledge of computer. (=He pretended to have…)
2. He professed as if he knew everything.

Just for fun!
(A pipe burst in a doctor's house. He called a plumber. The plumber arrived, unpacked his tools, did mysterious plumber-type things for a while, and handed the doctor a bill for $600.
The doctor exclaimed, "This is ridiculous! I don't even make that much as a doctor!."
The plumber quietly answered, "Neither did I when I was a doctor.")