- clinic (n.)
- 1620s, from French clinique (17c.), from Latin clinicus "physician that visits patients in their beds," from Greek klinike (techne) "(practice) at the sickbed," from klinikos "of the bed," from kline "bed, couch, that on which one lies," from suffixed form of PIE root *kli- "lean, slope" (see lean (v.)). An adjective originally in English, then "sick person;" sense of "hospital" is 1884, from German Klinik, itself from French clinique. The modern sense is thus reversed from the classical, when the "clinic" came to the patient.