means A licensed healthcare professional trained to prepare, dispense, and advise on medicines, checking that prescriptions are safe and correct before they reach you.

from From the Greek 'pharmakon,' a word with a double edge — it meant both 'remedy' and 'poison,' a reminder that the same substance can cure or kill depending on the dose. Through 'pharmakeia' (the use of drugs) it passed into Latin and the European languages, giving us 'pharmacy' and, with the agent ending '-ist,' the person who handles those dangerous, healing things. The older English word was 'apothecary,' from Greek 'apotheke,' a storehouse — literally one who keeps a stock — while 'pharmacist' became the modern term for the trained dispenser of that double-edged Greek 'pharmakon.'