empirical
adjective
Marty LuekenHayes Gardner
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Empirical Has Roots in Latin and Greek
When empirical first appeared as an adjective in English, it meant simply “in the manner of an empiric.” In the ancient world, empirics were members of a sect of doctors who practiced medicine using treatments observed to be clinically effective, rather than treatments based on theoretical principles. This sounds all fine and good to a modern reader, but empirics were in direct opposition to Galen, the 2nd century Greek physician whose theories and practices (including the theory of bodily humors) dominated medicine in Europe from the Middle Ages until the mid-17th century. As the underdogs in this rivalry, empirics took some reputational hits, evidenced by the use of empiric to refer to someone who disregards or deviates from the rules of science or accepted practice; to be called an empiric was sometimes like being called a quack or charlatan. Empirical can still be used critically to describe ideas and practices that rely on experience or observation alone and without due regard for system or theory. But, perhaps in a bit of a case of “the Empirics strike back,” empirical more often keeps its narrower sense, and is used positively to describe evidence and information grounded in observation and experience, or capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment.
Examples of empirical in a Sentence
Gail Nichols, Ceramics Monthly, February 2002
No religion, new or old, is subject to empirical proof, so what we have is a contest between faiths.
—Harvey Cox, Atlantic, March 1999
They collected plenty of empirical data from their experiments.
guidelines for raising children that are based on empirical evidence
Michael McCann, Sportico.com, 29 Oct. 2025
The team’s analysis, published in Royal Society Open Science, included more than 50 shark species and provides some of the best empirical evidence to date for some kind of firm scaling rule in zoology.
—Quanta Magazine, 27 Oct. 2025
Similar to finding that planets do not orbit the earth, the search for economics anomalies requires searching for empirical facts that cannot (easily) be explained using the standard economic model where everyone chooses by optimizing and makes no systematic mistakes.
—Emma Burleigh, Fortune, 21 Oct. 2025
Developed over two years, the CCI aims to give brands an empirical readout of how social, search and site traffic activity correspond with real economic indicators, from consumer demand to share-price performance.
—Sandra Salibian, Footwear News, 17 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for empirical
Cite this Entry
“Empirical.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
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empirical
adjective
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empirical
adjective
R. H. Shryock
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