locum tenens - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Existing in English since the seventeenth century: from Medieval Latin locum tenēns (literally “one holding a place”).^[1] Doublet of lieutenant.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌləʊkəm ˈtɛnɛns/

locum tenens (plural locum tenentes or locos tenentes)

1. A professional person (such as a doctor or clergyman) who temporarily fulfills the duties of another.

   • 1820, The Steeliad, a Poem, in Three Cantos, page 35:

     […] who speedily installed his Son […] into the office of Collector of Taxes, as a warming-pan, or locum tenens, till his Father-in-Law's twelvemonths of mock-heroic dignity had expired—or he should think proper to resume the Collectorship.

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     "I expected better things of you, Professor Summerlee." "You must remember," said Summerlee, sourly, "that I have a large class in London who are at present at the mercy of an extremely inefficient locum tenens."

• locum
• locus
• tenant