worst patient
- noun
- /wɜrst ˈpeɪʃənt/
- Informal
:
peor paciente
- Even as a doctor, she jokingly described herself as the worst patient for not following her own health advice.
Examples
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Even as a medical professional, she admitted to being the worst patient when it came to following advice.
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My mother can be the worst patient when she feels sick.
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It's a common joke that doctors make the worst patient.
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You'd think he'd take care of himself, but as a doctor, he's sometimes the worst patient.
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He is the worst patient I've ever seen!
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It's often said among health professionals that they make the worst patient due to their reluctance to seek help.
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He laughs at the irony of being the worst patient in his own clinic, ignoring all the advice he gives to others.
Antonyms
How Difficult
- Informal
- Specialized
386
2.1
939
1.0
119
3.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a straightforward adjectival modification: 'worst' (superlative of bad) + 'patient' yields 'the most bad/difficult patient', so a B1 learner who knows both words will derive the intended meaning. Any humorous or ironic uses (e.g. doctors being their 'own worst patient') are pragmatic extensions rather than idiomatic shifts, so the construction remains fully compositional and predictable.
Etymology
Worst patient uses worst, meaning most difficult, and patient, meaning someone under medical care. It comes from the image of a person, often a busy doctor, who ignores simple medical advice, so people call them the 'worst patient' to mean someone hard to treat or who won't follow advice.