HOW TO PRONOUNCE
specific
/spəˈsɪfɪk/
Press play to hear how to pronounce specific.
American Pronunciation Guide · 1:05
Watch on YouTube ↗
Watch on YouTube ↗
LISTEN FOR THIS
Keep the initial “sp” together.
Start with s and p without inserting a vowel between them. The main stress is on the next syllable, where the first c in the spelling is pronounced as s.
3 syllables · Stress on syllable 2
TRY SAYING
“The teacher gave a specific example.”
APG practice sentence · CC BY-SA 4.0
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary ↗What does specific mean?
adjective
- Explicit or definite.
- Pertaining to a species, as a taxon or taxa at the rank of species.
- Special, distinctive or unique.
More meanings (12)
adjective
- intended for, or applying to, a particular thing.
- Serving to identify a particular thing (often a disease or condition), with little risk of mistaking something else for it.
- Being a remedy for a particular disease on a deeper level, rather than just masking the symptoms.
- Limited to a particular antibody or antigen.
- Of a value divided by mass (e.g. specific orbital energy).
- Similarly referring to a value divided by any measure which acts to standardize it (e.g. thrust specific fuel consumption, referring to fuel consumption divided by thrust).
- A measure compared with a standard reference value by division, to produce a ratio without unit or dimension (e.g. specific refractive index is a pure number, and is relative to that of air).
noun
- A distinguishing attribute or quality.
- A remedy for a specific disease or condition.
- Specification.
- The details; particulars.
- The distinguishing part of a toponym.
Definitions regrouped for readability · CC BY-SA 4.0
IPA pronunciation
/spəˈsɪfɪk/
Pronunciation used in the listening tip.
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary ↗Pronunciation varies by speaker and region. About these dictionary pronunciations.
In the pages of books
See this word in context.
If there is any thing exceptionable, it must be sought for in the specific powers upon which this general declaration is predicated.
Besides, behind all making of such offers what else must come?—that he should “mention his case,” imply that he wanted specific things.
More book examples (2)
This means, in the second place, that this enduring adjustment supplies the background upon which are made specific adjustments, as occasion arises.
One, namely the distinctness of specific forms, and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links, is a very obvious difficulty.