specific
/spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/
"specific" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“specific” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,005 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #1,005
- frequency rank, English
- 8
- letters
- 12
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Explicit or definite.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | specific |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #1,005 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “specific” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for specific is 8 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,005 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 12 likely wrong-spelling variants for specific, with forms such as "psecific", "sepcific", and "spceific". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 2 confusable-pair relationships, "specify", "specified", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Old French specifique, from Late Latin specificus (“specific, particular”), from Latin speciēs (“kind”) + -ific. The correct English form is specific, spelled S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C.
Definition
- 1Explicit or definite.
- 2Pertaining to a species, as a taxon or taxa at the rank of species.
- 3Special, distinctive or unique.
- 4intended for, or applying to, a particular thing.
- 5Serving to identify a particular thing (often a disease or condition), with little risk of mistaking something else for it.
- 6Being a remedy for a particular disease on a deeper level, rather than just masking the symptoms
- 7Limited to a particular antibody or antigen.
- 8Of a value divided by mass (e.g. specific orbital energy).
- 9Similarly 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)
- 10A 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).
Etymology
From Old French specifique, from Late Latin specificus (“specific, particular”), from Latin speciēs (“kind”) + -ific.
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: psecific,sepcific,spceific,speccific,specfiic,specifci,speciffic,specificc,speciifc,speicfic,sppecific,sspecific
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of specific - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “specific”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “specify” - see the side-by-side comparison. specific vs specify
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.