# specific

> English word · Adjective · IPA /spɪˈsɪf.ɪk/ · frequency rank #1,005

## Definitions
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).

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

## Easily confused with
- **specify** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/specific-vs-specify)
- **specified** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/specific-vs-specified)

## Common misspellings (12)
`psecific`, `sepcific`, `spceific`, `speccific`, `specfiic`, `specifci`, `speciffic`, `specificc`, `speciifc`, `speicfic`, `sppecific`, `sspecific`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/specific