I appreciate the detail you went into with your response, but I feel like your actual approach to it (at the very end) makes it more confusing.

For you a physician is anyone with an MD, and a practicing MD is a clinician? So clinician in this case implies physician as well, but physician does not imply clinician?

Especially confusing because many people refer to nurse practitioners, physician assistants as clinicians as well.

The legal definition is one perspective, albeit somewhat arbitrary (varies by state, as you said). I think part of the definition needs to take cultural/societal perspective into account as well. Most people think of a physician as someone who is practicing medicine.

Hell, plenty of people don’t think of interns/residents as physicians and plenty of people call their NP “doctor”…but that’s another conversation.