What's the difference between special and specific?

Special


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a species; constituting a species or sort.
  • (a.) Particular; peculiar; different from others; extraordinary; uncommon.
  • (a.) Appropriate; designed for a particular purpose, occasion, or person; as, a special act of Parliament or of Congress; a special sermon.
  • (a.) Limited in range; confined to a definite field of action, investigation, or discussion; as, a special dictionary of commercial terms; a special branch of study.
  • (a.) Chief in excellence.
  • (n.) A particular.
  • (n.) One appointed for a special service or occasion.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The bank tellers who saw their positions filled by male superiors took special pleasure in going to the bank and keeping them busy.
  • (2) The frequency of rare fragile sites was studied among 240 children in special schools for subnormal intelligence (IQ 52-85).
  • (3) Theoretical findings on sterilization and disinfection measures are useless for the dental practice if their efficiency is put into question due to insufficient consideration of the special conditions of dental treatment.
  • (4) The Cole-Moore effect, which was found here only under a specific set of conditions, thus may be a special case rather than the general property of the membrane.
  • (5) In order to control noise- and vibration-caused diseases it was necessary not only to improve machines' quality and service conditions but also to pay special attention to the choice of operators and to the quality of monitoring their adaptation process.
  • (6) Despite of the increasing diagnostic importance of the direct determination of the parathormone which is at first available only in special institutions in these cases methodical problems play a less important part than the still not infrequent appearing misunderstanding of the adequate basic disease.
  • (7) Historical analysis shows that institutions and special education services spring from common, although not identical, societal and philosophical forces.
  • (8) The clinical usefulness of neonatal narcotic abstinence scales is reviewed, with special reference to their application in treatment.
  • (9) The very young history of clinical Psychology is demonstrating the value of clinical Psychologist in the socialistic healthy work and the international important positions of special education to psychological specialist of medicine.
  • (10) The differences might be due to an arrest of "specialization" in the regional expression of the different MHC isoforms.
  • (11) Mary's grief, which lasts for about the first half of the two-hour premiere special, is the finest work of the series so far by Michelle Dockery.
  • (12) The authors describe the special medical expertise of the psychiatrist and define 11 indicators, such as a patient's need for new psychotropic medication or the presence of symptoms requiring medical or laboratory procedures, that can be used to determine whether psychiatric expertise is needed.
  • (13) Many examples are given to demonstrate the applications of these programs, and special emphasis has been laid on the problem of treating a point in tissue with different doses per fraction on alternate treatment days.
  • (14) Doctors may plausibly make special claims qua doctors when they are treating disease.
  • (15) Following mass disasters and individual deaths, dentists with special training and experience in forensic odontology are frequently called upon to assist in the identification of badly mutilated or decomposed bodies.
  • (16) The indication of the DNA probe method would be considered in the four cases as follows, 1. necessity of the special equipment to isolate the pathogen, 2. necessity of the long period to isolate the pathogen, 3. existence of the cross reaction among the pathogen and relative organisms in the immunological procedure, 4. existence of the difficulty to identify the species of the pathogen by the ordinary procedure.
  • (17) This procedure generated a number of VI-like effects, supporting the notion that VI behavior can be construed as a special case of an interaction between the organism's function relating reinforcement susceptibilities to chain length and the experimenter's function relating probabilities of reinforcement to chain length.
  • (18) Special conditions apply for the scoring of a first and a last bone stage in a sequence, which will introduce less bias in the estimation of individual skeletal maturity with the MAT-method than with the TW-method.
  • (19) I also decided that the Kushner-Harvard relationship deserved special attention.
  • (20) A television camera scans the spread through microscope optics; computer and special purpose electronics process the video signals to generate run length histograms.

Specific


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a species; characterizing or constituting a species; possessing the peculiar property or properties of a thing which constitute its species, and distinguish it from other things; as, the specific form of an animal or a plant; the specific qualities of a drug; the specific distinction between virtue and vice.
  • (a.) Specifying; definite, or making definite; limited; precise; discriminating; as, a specific statement.
  • (a.) Exerting a peculiar influence over any part of the body; preventing or curing disease by a peculiar adaption, and not on general principles; as, quinine is a specific medicine in cases of malaria.
  • (n.) A specific remedy. See Specific, a., 3.
  • (a.) Anything having peculiar adaption to the purpose to which it is applied.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Comparison of the S100 alpha-binding protein profiles in fast- and slow-twitch fibers of various species revealed few, if any, species- or fiber type-specific S100 binding proteins.
  • (2) Unfortunately, due to confidentiality clauses that have been imposed on us by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, we are unable to provide our full names and … titles … However, we believe the evidence that will be submitted will validate the statements that we are making in this submission.” The submission detailed specific allegations – including names and dates – of sexual abuse of child detainees, violence and bullying of children, suicide attempts by children and medical neglect.
  • (3) Anti-Leu 7 could not be considered as a specific marker for oligodendroglioma.
  • (4) Five probes of high specificity to individual chromosomes (chromosomes 3, 11, 17, 18 and X) were hybridized in situ to metaphase chromosomes of different individuals.
  • (5) The nuclear origin of the Ha antigen was confirmed by the speckled nuclear immunofluorescence staining pattern given by purified antibody to Ha obtained from a specific immune precipitate.
  • (6) The role of Ca2+ in cell agglutination may be either to activate the cell-surface dextran receptor or to form specific intercellular Ca2+ bridges.
  • (7) The Cole-Moore effect, which was found here only under a specific set of conditions, thus may be a special case rather than the general property of the membrane.
  • (8) Although solely nociresponsive neurons are clearly likely to fill a role in the processing and signalling of pain in the conscious central nervous system, the way in which such useful specificity could be conveyed by multireceptive neurons is difficult to appreciate.
  • (9) On the other hand, after exposure to BrdUrd, neuron specific enolase decreased in NB-1 and SK-N-DZ and increased in GOTO.
  • (10) Most of the radioactivity in spleen cells from these rats were associated with antigen-reactive cells which formed rosettes specifically with HO erythrocytes.
  • (11) The origins of aging of higher forms of life, particularly humans, is presented as the consequence of an evolved balance between 4 specific kinds of dysfunction-producing events and 4 kinds of evolved counteracting effects in long-lived forms.
  • (12) The specific activities of extracts from cells grown under phototrophic and aerobic conditions were similar and not affected by the concentration of iron in the growth media.
  • (13) Proliferation assays using F3 showed that 15 (14 CD4+ and 1 CD8+) of the 18 isolated clones were specific for T. gondii.
  • (14) We have developed a new procedure for the rapid preparation of undegraded total RNA from cultured cells for specific quantitation by dot blotting analysis.
  • (15) Further studies are required to elucidate specific roles of the steroid-induced proteins in the effects of glucocorticoids on HTM and HS cells.
  • (16) In addition, the fact that microheterogeneity may occur without limit in the mannans of the strains suggests that antibodies with unlimited diverse specificities are produced directed against these antigenic varieties as well.
  • (17) Four other independent LCMV-GP2(275-289) specific H-2Db-restricted CTL clones also expressed V alpha 4 and V beta 10 gene elements.
  • (18) Training in social skills specific to fostering intimacy is suggested as a therapeutic step, and modifications to the social support measure for future use discussed.
  • (19) When compared with self-reported exposures, the sensitivity of both job-exposure matrices was low (on average, below 0.51), while the specificity was generally high (on average, above 0.90).
  • (20) The specific limited trypsinolysis of bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase (T7RP) was performed in the presence of various components of the polymerase reaction and some GTP-analogs--irreversible inhibitors of the enzyme.