specificity

[ spes-uh-fis-i-tee ]

noun

1. the quality or state of being specific.
2. Biochemistry, Pharmacology. the selective attachment or influence of one substance on another, as an antibiotic and its target organism or an antibody and its specific antigen.

Other Words From

• nonspec·i·fici·ty noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of specificity¹

First recorded in 1875–80; specific + -ity

Example Sentences

Nonetheless, there is shocking specificity in the functional match.

From Quanta Magazine

The enzymes could be designed to target longer sequences with more specificity, but that was a much more arduous and complex process than it is with CRISPR.

From Quanta Magazine

For example, if an advertiser wants to find a person with a specific job, age and gender through a display banner, it’s likely impossible, she said, and no publisher is going to be able to achieve that specificity on their own.

From Digiday

Custom audiences can give you more flexibility and specificity with your targeting and are designed to automatically choose the right audience based on the inputs you provide and your campaign goal and bid strategy.

From Search Engine Land

That lack of specificity may be to protect the sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

From Vox

He cast himself, he cast lovers, ex-lovers, friends, collaborators, and his films became famous for their bantering specificity.

From The Daily Beast

But everything in Abbudin feels willfully generic, as if even the tiniest hint of specificity might give offense.

From The Daily Beast

Alchemical songs that achieve pop universality through personal specificity.

From The Daily Beast

The specificity of the reporting instructions are strangely comforting… follow these steps exactly, and you will live.

From The Daily Beast

A judge eventually threw out the suit, concluding that the charges “lacked specificity.”

From The Daily Beast

The fact of specificity is supported by the fact of constancy of forms.

From Project Gutenberg

The first phenomenon which strikes us in this connection is again a phenomenon of specificity.

From Project Gutenberg

These experiments were made at a time when the nature and bearing of the problem of specificity was not yet fully recognized.

From Project Gutenberg

The method thus shows the existence of not an absolute but of a strong quantitative specificity of blood serum.

From Project Gutenberg

The Bordet reaction was not only useful in indicating the specificity and blood relationship for animals but also among plants.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• particularity
• precision