specificity
specificities
Specificity is the goal of anyone who wants to know — or give — every single detail. If your friend's story is too vague, ask for specificity when things aren't clear.
Specificity may look hard to pronounce, but if you remember that the first syllable rhymes with guess, the rest will flow easily: "spes-uh-FIS-uh-tee." Now try specificus, the Latin word at the root of specificity and the word species. Those words may not seem related — until you think about the classification of living things: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Species is the most specific in the hierarchy!
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the quality of being specific rather than general“add a desirable note of specificity to the discussion”“the specificity of the symptoms of the disease”
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type of:
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particularity, specialness
the quality of being particular and pertaining to a specific case or instance
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particularity, specialness
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the quality of being specific to a particular organism“host specificity of a parasite”
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type of:
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particularity, specialness
the quality of being particular and pertaining to a specific case or instance
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particularity, specialness
Vocabulary lists containing specificity
Arthur and Ben couldn't be more different. Arthur, a Jewish teenager from Georgia, is in New York City for a summer internship that he hopes will help him get into an Ivy League college. Ben, a native New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, is attending summer school so that he can avoid repeating 11th grade. Find out what happens when a series of coincidences brings these two together.
Following the Watergate break-in scandal (1972-1974), a subpoena was issued for tapes and papers related to meetings held by Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. The president claimed "executive privilege" to withhold the evidence, but the Supreme Court rejected his immunity claiming that no person is beyond the law. This decision reinforced the impeachment process and led to Nixon's resignation. These words are from the unanimous opinion written by Warren Burger. Read the full text here.
Francis Crick and James Watson changed the world forever—and won a Nobel Prize—when they uncovered the structure of DNA. In this memoir, Watson reveals the story behind their discovery.
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