pox doctorn.
/ˈpɒks ˌdɒktə/, U.S. /ˈpɑks ˌdɑktər/ colloquial.
A doctor specializing in the treatment of venereal disease. got up like a pox doctor's clerk and variants: dressed smartly but in bad taste; overdressed. Also figurative. rare before 20th cent.
ΘΚΠ
the world > textiles and clothing > clothing > wearing clothing > [adjective] > overdressed
got up like a pox doctor's clerk1680
bedizened1707
overdressed1769
dressed (or done, etc.) up like a sore finger (or toe)1919
tarted1938
the world > health and disease > healing > healer > specialist > [noun] > in disease > venereal disease
pox doctor1680
venerialist1763
syphilographer1839
syphilologist1851
venereologist1934
1680 W. Petyt Britannia Languens viii. 134 We have also far more Physitians, men of Medicine and Quacks, especially Pox-Doctors than ever.
1720 G. Cheyne Observ. Gout 39 The famous Pox-Doctor succeeds in some Cases, when mismanag'd Mercurial Treatments have fail'd.
1937 D. M. Jones In Parenthesis v. 118 The Pox-Doctor's Clerk, for one, the chitties, and types of scullion bummers up.
1965 E. Lambert Long White Night xv. 136 They was all dressed like they was at Buckingham Palace and Foran was done up like a pox doctor's clerk.
1984 J. Naughton in Listener 31 May 28/2 ‘That lot of nancy boys, pox doctors and old Etonians’..is Bradley's acute, if somewhat ripe, description of the Mother of Parliaments.
1999 T. Gilling Sooterkin (2000) 174 It's a torment worse than cramps and colic, worse than the pox and the pox doctor, worse than boils and blisters and buboes.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2006; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1680