Actor

 In class question came up, difference between "medication," "medicine," "pharmaceutical."

They overlap, but they are not quite the same thing.

    Medicine is the broadest and oldest term. It can mean:

        A substance used to treat illness ("Take your medicine.")

        The entire field of healing ("He studies medicine.")

        In some contexts, even traditional remedies ("herbal medicine").

    Medication usually means a specific drug or treatment prescribed or taken for a medical purpose.

        "What medications are you taking?"

        It sounds more clinical and is commonly used by healthcare professionals.

        A person may take several medications, each being a specific product or drug.

    Pharmaceutical is primarily an adjective meaning "related to drugs made by the pharmaceutical industry."

        "pharmaceutical research"

        "pharmaceutical company"

        As a noun, usually in the plural: "pharmaceuticals" = medicinal drugs in general.

Examples:

    "Aspirin is a medicine."

    "Aspirin is a medication used to reduce pain and fever."

    "Aspirin is a pharmaceutical product manufactured by a pharmaceutical company."

There is also a subtle tone difference:
Word    Tone
Medicine    Everyday, general
Medication    Clinical, specific
Pharmaceutical    Technical, industrial, scientific

A doctor is more likely to ask, "What medications are you currently taking?" while a parent is more likely to say, "Did you take your medicine?"

Interestingly, medicine can include things that many people would not call pharmaceuticals—traditional herbal remedies, for example. Pharmaceuticals usually implies products developed, manufactured, and regulated as drugs.

Ah, the word "drug." A bit forbidden any more.

Yes, "drug" has acquired a lot of baggage in everyday English.

Technically, a drug is simply any substance intended to affect the body's structure or function. By that definition, aspirin, insulin, metformin, finasteride, and even caffeine are drugs.

But in ordinary conversation, many people hear drug and think:

    Illegal narcotics

    Substance abuse

    Addiction

As a result, healthcare professionals often prefer medication when speaking with patients:

    "Are you taking any medications?" sounds neutral.

    "Are you taking any drugs?" can sound accusatory or suggest illicit substances.

The distinction isn't absolute, though. In medicine and pharmacology, "drug" remains perfectly standard:

    Drug interaction

    Drug trial

    Drug efficacy

    Drug dosage

    Drug-resistant bacteria

The U.S. regulator is still the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not the "Food and Medication Administration."

It's a bit like how undertaker gradually gave way to funeral director. The original word wasn't offensive, but its associations changed over time. "Drug" hasn't disappeared, but in patient-facing language it has often ceded ground to "medication."

Or "stewardess" is now "flight attendant."

Exactly. "Stewardess" → "flight attendant" is a good example of a broader shift toward more neutral job titles.

Originally, steward meant someone who managed or attended to something (a household, a ship, an estate), and stewardess was simply the feminine form. Airlines used steward and stewardess because the job was historically associated with serving passengers, and for many years airlines explicitly hired women for the "stewardess" role and men as "stewards."

By the late 20th century, several things changed:

    The job became understood as a safety role as much as a service role.

    More men entered the profession.

    Many people objected to titles that marked gender when gender was irrelevant to the work.

So flight attendant became the preferred term because it describes the function rather than the person's sex.

There are many similar examples:

    Chairman/chairwoman → chair or chairperson

    Policeman/policewoman → police officer

    Fireman → firefighter

    Mailman → mail carrier

    Waiter/waitress → server (though "waiter" and "waitress" are still widely used)

Some of these changes are widely accepted; others remain matters of style and region. For example, "waiter" and "waitress" are still very common in restaurants, while "flight attendant" has almost completely replaced "stewardess" in formal use.

Language does this constantly: words don't just describe reality; they carry the history and social assumptions of the time when they were used. "Stewardess" is a nice example because the old word is not inherently insulting—it simply belongs to a different social era.

I got corrected when a picture of Katherine Hepburn appeared and I identified her as a great actor.  One of the students corrected me with "actress" and I responded one would be better off not using that to her.

That was actually a very good example of how language change can collide with individual preference and identity.

Your response about Katharine Hepburn was in line with a movement among many performers themselves: using "actor" as a gender-neutral term. Hepburn, in particular, belonged to an era when "actress" was the normal word, but today many actors—women included—prefer simply actor because the achievement is the craft, not the gender of the performer.

There is an interesting historical twist: "actress" was not originally a diminutive or lesser word. It was simply the feminine form, like "waitress" or "stewardess." But over time, some professions developed a hierarchy where the male term was treated as the "default" and the female term as a marked category. In Hollywood, "actor" came to sound like the serious artistic title, while "actress" sometimes carried extra baggage from awards categories, publicity, or older assumptions about women in entertainment.

That is why you will hear:

    "She is a great actor." (emphasizes artistry)

    "She is a great actress." (also correct, but specifically marks gender)

The interesting thing is that the language is not settled. Many women in acting still happily call themselves actresses, including in award categories such as "Best Actress." Others, such as Frances McDormand, have explicitly favored "actor" as the broader professional term.

So your instinct—especially in reference to Katharine Hepburn—was not a mistake. You were using the modern gender-neutral professional sense of actor. The student's correction reflected the older grammatical distinction, but it was not the only acceptable usage. In fact, the "correction" itself was a little behind the times.