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 Word Forms

• nonspecificity noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of specificity¹

First recorded in 1875–80; specific + -ity

Example Sentences

That temporal and site specificity gives the place much of its power.

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“As we went on, the specificity of every moment wasn’t necessarily fixed,” Dickinson notes.

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But some experts and many Altadena residents worry that the report’s lack of specificity helps officials dodge accountability and makes it more difficult to ensure that such a catastrophic failure doesn’t happen again.

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Yet his homespun wit and his emotional specificity also bear the influence of the master he describes as his “songwriting GOAT”: John Prine.

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The defined religious and social world, rooted in a cultural specificity, was all the more universal for its vivid particularity.

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Related Words

• particularity 
• precision