particularize
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make particular.
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to mention or indicate specifically; specify.
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to state or treat in detail.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to treat in detail; give details (about)
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(intr) to go into detail
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of particularize
From the Middle French word particulariser, dating back to 1580–90. See particular, -ize
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:
But even at this velocity — Mays must run miles each show — he manages to particularize each of the Cratchit children and most of the guests at the Christmas party of Fred, Scrooge’s nephew.
From New York Times ● Nov. 21, 2022
The affidavit for a search warrant must particularize the federal statute that law enforcement believes has been broken by the subject.
From Slate ● Aug. 9, 2022
Photojournalists have deployed a familiar toolbox of artful devices to distill these panoramas of destruction down to human scale, particularize the war and speak to a wider public.
From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2018
Of course, the real art lies in the superstructure, in how Sophocles, Fitzgerald and Tolkien particularize this general archetype and make it into something fresh and uniquely their own.
From Washington Post ● May 12, 2016
The multiple or protracted form, if it be thought desirable to thus particularize cases presenting an excessive and unusual number of relapses, as three, four, five, six, or even seven.
From A System of Practical Medicine by American Authors, Vol. I Volume 1: Pathology and General Diseases by Various
This policy, she explains, “tramples the constitutional requirement that officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.”
From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2025
The ruling permits federal agents to resume raids across Los Angeles and surrounding counties — raids where people are seized with no warrant, no particularized cause for suspicion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2025
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revived the case in 2020, concluding: "A rebuffed request for information to which the requester is statutorily entitled is a concrete, particularized and individualized personal injury."
From Reuters ● Jun. 26, 2023
They added, “This information appears to have had no individualized nexus to particularized criminal conduct, but was rather a data dump of BoA customers’ transactions over a three-day period.
From Washington Times ● May 26, 2023
This being ineffectual, the grounds of the controversy were again particularized, and more terrible inflictions threatened.
From The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets by Lord, Eleazar
In her memoirs, Ernaux plunges us headfirst into her experiences, particularizing her recollections with cultural, commercial and personal artifacts — news stories, groceries, snapshots — and distilling insights from her present perspective.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2022
In the absence of further particularizing information or evidence, this allegation should be treated as not having the potential to be credible.
From New York Times ● Dec. 31, 2021
That’s a problem built into the bloated mash-up of genres: Comedy is based on particularizing human behavior, but allegory is based on generalizing it.
From New York Times ● Oct. 10, 2019
The result: the court was stuck particularizing its position for the next 20 years.
From Time Magazine Archive
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They signed a paper particularizing their charge, and offered to refer the question to a tribunal of gentlemen, with the Duke of Wellington or Lord Wharncliffe to preside.
From The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims Volume II (of II) by Steinmetz, Andrew
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.