specific
Pronunciation
  • (America, British) IPA: /spəˈsɪf.ɪk/, /spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/
Adjective

specific

  1. explicit or definite
  2. (sciences) Pertaining to a species.
    • 2008, Richard Dawkins, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, Oxford 2009, p. 3:
      Science and literature, then, are the two achievements of Homo sapiens that most convincingly justify the specific name.
  3. (taxonomy) pertaining to a taxon at the rank of species
  4. special, distinctive or unique
  5. intended for, or applying to, a particular thing
  6. Serving to identify a particular thing (often a disease or condition), with little risk of mistaking something else for it.
    a highly specific test, specific and nonspecific symptoms
  7. being a remedy for a particular disease
    Quinine is a specific medicine in cases of malaria.
  8. (immunology) limited to a particular antibody or antigen
  9. (physics) of a value divided by mass (e.g. specific orbital energy)
  10. (physics) 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)
  11. (physics) 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)
Synonyms Antonyms Translations Translations Translations Translations
  • Russian: осо́бенный
Translations
  • Portuguese: específico
  • Russian: специа́льный
Translations Translations
  • Russian: удельный
Translations
  • Russian: относительный
Noun

specific (plural specifics)

  1. A distinguishing attribute or quality.
  2. A remedy for a specific disease or condition.
    • 1968, Charles Portis, True Grit:
      I had no unreasonable fear of bats, […] yet I knew them too for carriers of the dread “Hydrophobia,” for which there was no specific.
  3. Specification
  4. (in the plural) The details; particulars.



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