Help to understand the word "practice

Posted by Bruce Kahl on November 16, 2004

In Reply to: Help to understand the word "practice posted by TheFallen on November 16, 2004

: : Hi,

: : I have got some problems with the word "practice" in some contexts.
: : The sentence is the following: We had research grants from the federal government, as well as a large hospital-based practice that included treating patients who neeeded to have their communications skills evaluated, for instance, after a stroke.

: : Well, what is practice in this context?

: : Thank you very, very much for your help.

: :
: : Best regards,

: :
: : Elaine Pepe
: : São Paulo/Brazil

: This from the American Heritage Dictionary On-line:-

: 4. Exercise of an occupation or profession: the practice of law/medicine.

: In your sentence, it simply means a group of doctors or medical professionals who, I would guess, probably specialised in speech therapy.

: For the record, in UK English at least, the verb is always spelled "practise" and the noun "practice" - similarly with the verbal "license" and the nominal "licence" and (the easy way to remember this) the verb "advise" and the noun "advice". I however seem to remember that transatlantically they play rather fast and loose with this rule and probably ignore it entirely, knowing them.

Only foreigners spell license licence.