specialization
Americannoun
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specializations
plural
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the act of specializing, or pursuing a particular line of study or work.
Medical students with high student loans often feel driven into specialization.
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Biology. the adaptation of an organism or organ to a special function or environment.
Basic biology suggests the selective pressures leading to convergent evolutionary specialization among desert-dwelling species.
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the act of being restricted to some specific, or the act of becoming specialized.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of specialization
Explanation
If you have a specialization, that means you focus on a specific aspect of a larger topic. If you’re a nurse, your specialization might be pediatric care, which means you focus on providing care to infants and children. You probably notice that the word special makes up a big part of specialization, which can help you remember its meaning. Your specialization is your special subject or skill. If you’re planning on studying biology in college, your advisor eventually will ask what your area of specialization will be. When you graduate, you’ll know a lot about biology in general, but there’ll be a particular area — such as marine biology or rodent reproduction — that you studied deeply.
Vocabulary lists containing specialization
The Industrial Revolution - Introductory
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Cell Biology - Middle School
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Cell Biology - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Researchers say the species uses a powerful spring-loaded silk trap to capture a single type of prey, catching one ant at a time in what they describe as "the ultimate specialization."
From Science Daily ● Jun. 26, 2026
“This is the specialization that we are good at: data. So we’re just focused on that.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
Pay can vary widely depending on specialization, setting and hours.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 28, 2026
In most of these tissues, repair happens through the activation and specialization of stem cells.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 20, 2026
That kind of specialization would be the key to managing the increasingly complex nature of aeronautical research in the postwar era.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
The population is too small to support many medical specializations, such as kidney transplants.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 24, 2026
There’s still no definitive winner among AI models, Sette believes, and Anthropic’s product performs very well in specializations such as coding.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 11, 2025
The new reconstruction of the skeleton also sheds light on specializations for head mobility in Tiktaalik and new details of the fish's pelvic fin anatomy.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 5, 2024
The authorities, they say, have long ignored systemic issues that made specializations like dermatology and cosmetic surgery more lucrative than essential services like emergency care.
From New York Times ● Mar. 4, 2024
If the baculum tended to retain its primitive character while specializations in the external anatomy developed, and if the above arrangement is correct the most primitive bacula would be found in Dicrostonyx and in Synaptomys.
From The Baculum in Microtine Rodents by Sydney Anderson
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
