specialization
Americannoun
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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:
Pay can vary widely depending on specialization, setting and hours.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 28, 2026
They play a vital role in basic biological functions, including cell growth and specialization.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 2, 2026
With that specialization also came espresso beverages—the flat whites, cappuccinos, and Americanos that now make up the baseline menu for most coffee shops.
From Slate ● Dec. 22, 2025
The acquisition—which is subject to shareholder approval—would combine Fairstone Bank’s commercial lending operations with Laurentian Bank’s commercial specialization.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 2, 2025
That was not because chiefdoms were more kindly disposed toward defeated enemies but because the greater economic specialization of states, with more mass production and more public works, provided more uses for slave labor.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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
That work is beginning to yield new insights about the tongue’s evolutionary trajectories, and how its specializations fueled further diversification.
From Science Magazine ● May 24, 2023
Nitosauridae are small primitive edaphosaurs with a moderately elongate face, sharp subisodont teeth, little development of canines and few specializations.
From Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma by Fox, Richard C.
Definitions 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.
