English Explanatory Dictionary

specific

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. Explicit or definite.
  2. Pertaining to a species, as a taxon or taxa at the rank of species.
  3. Special, distinctive or unique.
  4. intended for, or applying to, a particular thing.
  5. Serving to identify a particular thing (often a disease or condition), with little risk of mistaking something else for it.
  6. Being a remedy for a particular disease on a deeper level, rather than just masking the symptoms
  7. Limited to a particular antibody or antigen.
  8. Of a value divided by mass (e.g. specific orbital energy).
  9. Similarly referring to a value divided by any measure which acts to standardize it (e.g. thrust specific fuel consumption, referring to fuel consumption divided by thrust)
  10. A measure compared with a standard reference value by division, to produce a ratio without unit or dimension (e.g. specific refractive index is a pure number, and is relative to that of air).
noun
  1. A distinguishing attribute or quality.
  2. A remedy for a specific disease or condition.
  3. Specification
  4. The details; particulars.
  5. The distinguishing part of a toponym.

Pronunciation

/spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/ /spəˈsɪf.ɪk/ en-us-specific.ogg /spəˈsəf.ək/ /spɛkˈsi.fɪk/ /ˈspɛ.sɪ.fɪk/ /ˈspɛs.fɪk/

Word forms

specific more specific most specific specifick specifics

Etymology

From Old French specifique, from Late Latin specificus (“specific, particular”), from Latin speciēs (“kind”) + -ific.

Synonyms

monosemous unambiguous singular concrete discrete individual particular proper specific peculiar express

Antonyms

unspecific nonspecific broad general generic universal all-purpose general-purpose gross group-specific antigen non-specific overall pandemic specific activity specific gravity bottle widespread

Related words

generic

Derived words

allospecific antiphosphospecific aspecific biospecific bispecific cardiospecific chemospecific chirospecific cospecific domain-specific language donor-specific antibody ecospecific enantiospecific ethnospecific extraspecific gender-specific geospecific haplospecific hepatospecific heterospecific homospecific hyperspecific idiospecific immunospecific inspecific isospecific JVM-specific nanospecific neurospecific nothospecific organospecific osteospecific overspecific panspecific paraspecific phosphospecific plurispecific polyspecific prespecific prostate-specific antigen quadrispecific regiospecific semispecific serospecific serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor specifical specifically specificate specific charge specific contract specific density specific energy specific epithet specific fuel consumption specific gravity specific heat specific heat capacity specific humidity specific impulse specificity
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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